I Wake In The Middle
Of The Night, And I Hear The Fiddle Going, And The Sound Of Feet Keeping
Time, In Some Of The Dependencies Of The Large Building Near The
Tuilleries, In Which I Have My Lodgings.
When a generation of Frenchmen
"Have played, and laughed, and danced, and drank their fill" -
when they have seen their allotted number of vaudevilles and swallowed
their destined allowance of weak wine and bottled small-beer, they are
swept off to the cemetery of Montmartre, or of Pere la Chaise, or some
other of the great burial-places which lie just without the city. I went
to visit the latter of these the other day. You are reminded of your
approach to it by the rows of stone-cutters' shops on each side of the
street, with a glittering display of polished marble monuments. The place
of the dead is almost a gayer-looking spot than the ordinary haunts of
Parisian life. It is traversed with shady walks of elms and limes, and its
inmates lie amidst thickets of ornamental shrubs and plantations of the
most gaudy flowers. Their monuments are hung with wreaths of artificial
flowers, or of those natural ones which do not lose their color and shape
in drying, like the amaranth and the ever-lasting. Parts of the cemetery
seem like a city in miniature; the sepulchral chapels, through the windows
of which you see crucifixes and tapers, stand close to each other beside
the path, intermingled with statues and busts.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 11 of 396
Words from 2588 to 2841
of 107287
