PERE-LA-CH-9ISE.
I WAS wandering the other day in the populous solitudes of the Pere-la-Chaise; and after reading an infinity of inscriptions, it oc- curred to me to reflect how few of them express the confident hope so frequent in English burial-grounds of the rise to immortality and a new life. The epitaphs in general breathe more of human affections than heavenward aspiration ; it is not the triumphant word so often seen about London, "Resurgam," but the humble formula, "Requiescat in pace." The only design I recollect in the English taste, is on a somewhat ostentatious obelisk erected by Madame la Duchesse de DonAs to her daughter; and represents a stalwart angel flying upwards with a maiden, over whose features and form death seems recently to have passed. If the sentiment ise not triumphant or religious, it is generally tender or affectionate: it female figure, as of a daughter contemplating a bust which -might be that of her father, is more agpeeable to the taste of the French. They are for the most part the monuments of family affection, and often bespeak in touching terms the regrets of stir- viving friends—the love of brother and sister—the affliction of parent or orphan—the desolation of the widow; with frequently a philosophic anticipation of the moment when the survivor is to occupy the space vacant by the side of the departed.- "J'attends ma mere," you read in one compartment of a marble tablet; and in the other, under a more recent date, "J'ai rejoint ma fille." "Nous nous revere-ens, attends-moi," is inscribed by a mother on the tomb. of her daughter. Under the inscription, "A la memoire de 'non epouse," are two tablets, of which one offers a name and a date, with these words above," La mort nous a separesr the other is yet uninscribed except. by the words "La mort nous reunira." The fresh verdure of the orange-tree, myrtle, and laurea-rose, shows that the departed is yet had in remembrance. " Unis sue- la terre. et dans l'eternite," or, "La mort me-me ne lee separera pas," is the common but beautiful epigraph over the doors of the sip ultures de famille,—those little comfortable mausoleums whose neatness and simplicity are creditable to the taste and feeling of the French bourgeoisie. In some of a prouder aspect it is more Catholic, as "Sous laprotection de Jesus et de Nlarie on repose en paix ;" and in one or two of apparent haut ton, you are bid, in the good old style, "Prier Dieu pour le repos de son ame ;" but these are the excep- tions. If religion be often silent on these tombs, and the epitaph be more eloquent to paint the grief of friends than the worth of the dead, there is little of worldly pomp and mundane vanities, escutcheons, shields, coronets, and baubles—of all human pride the most absurd, which puts forth its poor vaunt in the face of death, and among the humble mementos of brief mortality. Of the severely moral epitaph, where grief is suppressed by the conscious- ness of departed worth,—the taste is foreign to this spot,—I remem- ber but one example, and that is in the language of a very different people—" Mark the perfect man and behold the just, for the end oj that man is peace.' I need not say to what country "that man" belonged.
The genius of the French tongue often appears to advantage in the short and affecting memorials of family love by which these shades are hallowed. "0 mon fils ! mon unique fity! c'etait done ei ta mere a felever un tombeau !"—such is the heart-shriek of the widowed mother over an only son killed in the attack on the Swiss Barracks in the Rue Babylone, July 29. " Nous damns pus serre see mains, nous n'avons pas fermi see yeux," is the last insupportable addition to the loss of a husband and a brother dead in foreign land. Of all the monuments of family sorrow, the cenotaph is the most touching :— "11y foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed—
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed."
Death, less hideous because less present, is accompanied with a sentiment that renders him yet more melancholy and pathetic. It is with this superadded feeling that one reads, "A la memoi re de Jules, notre frere Men aimi, tue a Dresde ;" . . . . and below, "Je reviendrai, dit-il, avec la croix, ou vous ne me reverrez plus."
After the manner of our churchyards, affliction is often more
diffuse. "Et tu m' a fait le jour de r eternel adieu, Repondre ks pre- mieres larmes," are the last two lines of a stanza on a very recent tomb erected by a young widow to her husband. On the tomb of six ans, among several others, you read- " Tes regards expressifs attaches sur ta mere
Au moment on la mort vint former ta paupiere, Semblaient la remercier de ses soins superflus . . ! "
This is tender ; but generally, where grief pours itself out more at length, feeling is less apparent and the taste more questionable. Our language, which is more diffuse, and in which love and friend- ship do not easily find the brief touching accents they speak in French, far transcends its rival, when it has ampler space and wider scope for expression. I should like to see a mother's grief touched off in French with the affecting simplicity of the follow- ing lines-
" Grief fills the room up if my absent child Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form . . . Pare you well ! had you such loss as I, I could give better counsel than you do."
VOLTAIRE, a wit as sparkling as a diamond, and—as one I wot of well added—" as hard,"—VoLTAIRE, of whom DAVID HUME, the most callous of critics, borrowed his canons,—VouTAms would say—"I1 est vrai que le sentiment en eel un pen avili par quelques idees pen basses... 4.c. ;" but men to whom God has vouchsafed a heart will acknowledge in them the voice of nature, and be sensible only of its truth. If, however, it is given to great men to tune our language to strains like these, it is the privilege of but few: either the tongue is less pliant, or taste less general among 115 and, perhaps, there is truth in both : certainly, the generality of French monumental inscriptions are pleasing to the reader, and the majority of English indifferent or disagreeable. It is not often that Latin is-borrowed in Pere-la-Chaise, unless it be to mark the tomb of a savant. There are two lines in this language on the grave of a young wife, the thought of which is pleasing ; I can recollect only a fragment: " Felicior annos, Dive tuos, conjux optime, vive meos. This is generous; but it does not add, " and make yourself happy in another bride."
A laconic brevity is frequently aimed at, and is sometimes
• pleasing, sometimes not; ex. gr. " Qui a connu le reg,rette"—" Ls fruit de noire amour"—" Notre unique esigrance." In alittlefune- real garden enclosed with palisades, and planted with saes, myrtles, jasmine, -and every flower elrat sheets an odour, or can throw a smile upon death, an eniksa family seems gathered together, with monuments and inseririons of a size and length proportioned to their respective ages. -The profane will smile perhaps to read on the least of them, "A/'d, cher petit ange !—Oct. 8." On the next is, 0 Emile, une annk de bonheur ;" and 30 on. "A leur mere, sess reconnaissans,'Is a common form, as touching under the cypress os it is grand,over the facade of the Pantheon, where you read in letters of 'go1d. the gratitude of a great nation to the great among her sons -passed away—" Aux grands hommes la patrze reconnais- sante." Unhappily, in one of Paul. DE Kocn's licentious novels, which Piave had the misfortune to read, there is a piece of buf- foonery so hAufferably ludicrous, as well as indecent, in con- nexion with this formula, that, whether on the majestic front of the :Pantheon, environed by associations of what is greatest among mea, or on the humble marble of an affectionate monument, I can never see it without discomposure. This it is to sully the imagination by worthless and degrading images ! Ah, ingenuous youth ! that wouldst cherish high thoughts in a pure breast, take heed that in beguiling an idle hour thou contract not stains that shall wear out only with life ! . . . "Something too much of this." The love of brevity has sometimes restricted the epitaph to a name. Under the bust of one venerable in years, is simply "Breguet." These letters must in the recollection of some stand for something more than a proper name, and imply either great deeds or good works. It must be the latter, for names fly abroad on the wings of great deeds, and this is unknown: it is the latter, if we may believe a line of VOLTAIRE, which affection has pencilled on the marble—"Le paurre allait le your et revertait content." Happy old man ! whose name is rendered by the gratitude of survivors into" charity !" Sometimes there is not even a name, as though piety would enjoy the luxury of wo without participation : " who knew their worth and deeds of love, know who rest here ; their name shall on this spot never be repeated with indifference." Such has been the feeling of those who, without more addition, have inscribed on a plain stone, "Notre meilleur (rani, notre pere." And under a vase of marble is written, "La s(Ipulture de trois amis." What a history in three words, and known but to those who placed this memorial!
" They passed, nor of their name and race Have left a token or a trace."
There is somewhere in Pere-la-Chaise a nameless tomb, that tells a story written in characters of blood, and blazoned abroad over the whole earth. I have sought it, but that is not the way to find aught in Pere-la-Chaise. There is, indeed, in an obscure corner, a low square stone of unusual dimensions, laid fiat on the ground, without date or name, on which the love of friends or of countrymen has thrown many a crown. But they are rotting, and have been replaced by none more recent : the grass too is dank around, and the willow and cypress branches are not worn away as by passing pilgrims. It cannotbe the grave I sought, for he was one whom high deeds have illustrated, and whom his fate has hal- lowed. It was LAMARQUE (MICR Divus, and yet "Ulysses lives!"), who, in the memorable debate on les grands hommes—a debate full of feeling and full of mockery, strangely composed of the grand and the ridiculous, like the French character itself—re- minded the Chamber, in those emphatic words that so often fell from this man of high thoughts and generous soul, of a low fiat stone, without date or name, which covered the remains of—Nzy ! Nuy, judicially murdered by a sentence of the Court of Peers, and under the faith of a capitulation to which was attached the seal and honour of a British General. Proh pudor ! how has the great name of England been taken in vain by men of whom it is poor revenge to say, they were not Englishmen ! "But if they were not your countrymen, they were your mercenaries." Most true, and it must be allowed that HUDSON LOWE at least was a born as well as a paid Englishman. The first time I find that grave, I will add my mite of indignation to the world's great cry; and it shall be as thus- " Ce incurtre d'un hhos, ils le comment supplice How cruelly thoughts like these contrast with the sentiment that reigns in this place ! If in the catacombs of a vast capital, torn by civil discord and maddened by party resentment—if in the charnel vaults of cathedrals, amid Gothic monuments cumbered With shields and heavy with trophies, some monument is shown of human wo and human wickedness; or if in the gloomy apart- ments of a regal palace—a Holyrood or a Fontainebleau—they point to a damning stain that centuries have not worn out, such memorials are in unison wills the recollections that attach to such scenes—days of violence—acts of violence—bad men—worse wo- men—foul deeds in foul places. But here l—under the blue heaven—amidst the verdure of cypress and the bloom of roses—in the last peaceful retreat of human charities—friends ! brethren ! fathers !—names hallowed by affection—dear records of family love sublimed by death—what? murder ! stern murder! judicial assassination! cold unrelenting cruelty of men robed in silk that go softly and fare sumptuously !—the Luxembourg, that did the deed, should have buried the victim—a freeman's curse on them and their doings I For the present, enough. These thoughts befit not the sad gayety of funereal roses and the tender glooms of the waving cypress—Elysian walks, where oft . . . . " shall Sorrow lean her drooping head, And feed deep thought with many a dream; And Fingering pause' and lightly tread, Food wretch! as if her step disturbed the dead!"
Previous page
