A Correct Letter from a Young Man Traveling in Europe to His Fiancée
MY DEAREST EDITH:
How I long to see you—to hold tight your hand—to look into your
eyes. But alas! you are in Toledo and I am in Paris, which, as
you know, is situated on the Seine River near the middle of the
so-called Paris basin at a height above sea-level varying from 85
feet to 419 feet and extending 7 1/2 miles from W. to E. and 5
1/2 miles from N. to S. But, dearest, I carry your image with me
in my heart wherever I go in this vast city with its population
(1921) of 2,856,986 and its average mean rainfall Of 2.6 inches,
and I wish—oh, how I wish—that you might be here with me.
Yesterday, for example, I went to the Père Lachaise cemetery
which is the largest (106 acres) and most fashionable cemetery in
Paris, its 90,148 (est.) tombs forming a veritable open-air
sculpture gallery. And what do you think I found there which made
me think of you more than ever? Not the tombs of La Fontaine (d.
1695) and Molière (d. 1673) whose remains, transferred to this
cemetery in 1804, constituted the first interments—not the last
resting place of Rosa Bonheur (d. 1899) or the victims of the
Opéra Comique fire (1887)—no, dearest, it was the tomb of
Abelard and Heloïse, those late 11th early 12th century lovers,
and you may well imagine what thoughts, centering upon a young
lady whose first name begins with E, filled my heart as I gazed
at this impressive tomb, the canopy of which is composed of
sculptured fragments collected by Lenoir from the Abbey of
Nogent-sur-Seine (Aube).
Edith dearest, I am sitting in my room gazing first at your dear
picture and then out of my window at the Eiffel Tower which is
the tallest structure in the world, being 984 feet high
(Woolworth Building 750 feet, Washington Obelisk 555 feet, Great
Pyramid 450 feet). And although it may sound too romantic, yet it
seems to me, dearest, that our love is as strong and as sturdy as
this masterpiece of engineering construction which weighs 7,000
tons, being composed of 12,000 pieces of metal fastened by
2,500,000 iron rivets.
Farewell, my dearest one—I must go now to visit the Catacombs, a
huge charnelhouse which is said to contain the remains of nearly
three million persons, consisting of a labyrinth of galleries
lined with bones and rows of skulls through which visitors are
escorted on the first and third Saturday of each month at 2 P. M.
I long to hold you in my arms.
Devotedly,
PAUL.