"When a funeral procession traverses a street or passes along a boulevard, all noise ceases at the moment, and it might be said that all life is momentarily suspended. Poor or rich, young or old, this dead man who, two days earlier, would have found no consideration from this jesting crowd, is respectfully saluted by the multitude. The vehicles which, during his lifetime, would have taken the chances of running over him sooner than slackening their speed, now pull up suddenly to allow him to pass. The sentry on duty salutes; the women cross themselves; the men uncover!
"In the enclosure specially reserved for death, the spectacle is not less edifying. There are but very few cemeteries in Europe as well maintained as the Parisian cemeteries. In no other city are they more frequently visited, and more respectfully. The multitude that there throngs scarcely dares to speak, and converses only in subdued tones. Even those who have in them neither relatives nor friends visit them at least once a year. The first and the second of November are generally selected for this pious pilgrimage. These are the fête-days of our cemeteries.
"In order that they may appear more attractive on these days, the toilette of the funeral monuments and the tombs is commenced long in advance. The bouquets are renewed. The wreaths that are too much faded are replaced by others. All the flowers freshly planted are carefully watered; each one employs his best taste in setting forth the resting-place of the dear absent ones. Regret makes itself friendly and gracious; grief itself takes on a little coquetry. Nothing is more delicate and more moving than this annual pilgrimage of the people of Paris to these places of eternal repose."
Many of the details gathered by M. Havard in the course of his careful inspection of these respect-compelling enclosures are worthy of preservation. In Père-Lachaise, for example, it is well not to be too credulous. "You may there discover, in fact, very many tombs decorated with names familiar in various ways, and even very great names, which certainly have never contained the ashes of those whose memory they honor. Neither Lavoisier, nor Lesurques, 'victim of the most deplorable of judicial errors,' as his epitaph says, nor General Malet, whose body was interred in the cemetery of executed criminals, would be able to find themselves under the monuments which a posthumous piety has reared to them. The same can be said of the tombs of Racine, of Molière, and of La Fontaine, which were the first to embellish these groves, and of which the style proclaims clearly enough that they do not date further back than the First Empire. It is the same for Héloïse and Abélard, and for their graceful little structure to which the lovers and the newly married do not fail to pay pious visits. This historic tomb, constructed of composite materials, is also of very recent erection. The two statues ornamented, in the last century, the monument which stood in the Abbaye de Paraclet; from there they were transported at first to the Musée des Petits-Augustins, and, in 1817, to the place where we now see them. The graceful canopy which covers them is formed of materials borrowed from the ancient Abbaye de Nogent-sur-Marne. As to the ashes of these perfect lovers, they have been scattered to the winds for a great many centuries."