A Wanderer in Paris

by E. V. Lucas

The vault of the Panthéon may be seen only in the company of a guide, and there is a charge. To be quite sure that Rousseau is in his grave is perhaps worth the money; but one resents the fee none the less. Great Frenchmen's graves—especially Victor Hugo's—should be free to all. There is no charge at the Invalides. You may stand beside Heine's tomb in the Cimetière de Montmartre without money and without a guide, but not by Voltaire's in the Panthéon; Balzac's grave in Père Lachaise is free, Zola's in the Panthéon costs seventy-five centimes.

The guide hurries his flock from one vault to another, at one point stopping for a while to exchange badinage with an echo. Rousseau, as I have said, is here; Voltaire is here; here are General Carnot, President Carnot with a mass of faded wreaths, Soufflot—who designed the Panthéon, thinking his work was for St. Geneviève, and who died of anxiety owing to a subsidence of the walls; Victor Hugo, and, lately moved hither, not without turmoil and even pistol shots, the historian of the Rougon-Macquart family and the author of a letter of accusation famous in history.

Not without turmoil! which reminds one that the Panthéon's funerals have been more than a little grotesque. I said, for example, that Mirabeau was the first prophet of reason to be buried here, amid a concourse of four hundred thousand mourners; yet you may look in vain for his tomb. And there is a record of the funeral of Marat, in a car designed by David; yet you may look in vain for Marat's sarcophagus also. The explanation (once more) is that we are in France, the land of the fickle mob. For within three years of the state burial of Mirabeau, with the National Guard on duty, the Convention directed that he should be exhumed and Marat laid in his place. Mirabeau's body therefore was removed at night and thrown into the earth in the cemetery of Clamart. Enter Marat. Marat, however, lay beneath this imposing dome only three poor months, and then off went he, a discredited corpse, to the graveyard of St. Etienne-du-Mont close by. Voltaire, however, and Rousseau held their own, and here they are still, as we have seen.

Voltaire came hither under circumstances at once tragic and comic. The cortège started from the site of the Bastille, led by the dead philosopher in a cart drawn by twelve horses, in which his figure was being crowned by a young girl. Opposite the Opera house of that day—by the Porte St. Martin—a pause was made for the singing of suitable hymns (from the Ferney Hymnal!) and on it came again. Surrounding the car were fifty girls dressed by David for the part; in the procession were other damsels in the costumes of Voltaire's characters. Children scattered roses before the horses. What could be prettier for Voltaire? But it needed fine weather, and instead came the most appalling storm, which frightened all the young women (including Fame, from the car) into doorways, and washed all the colour from the great man's effigy.

Remembering all these things, one realises that Rodin's Penseur, who was placed before the Panthéon in 1906, has something to brood over and break his mind upon.

I noticed also among the graves that of one Ignace Jacqueminot, and wondering if it were he who gave his name to the rose, I was so conscious of gloom and mortality that I hastened to the regions of light—to the sweet air of the Mont du Paris and the blue sky over all. And later I climbed to the lantern—a trifle of some four hundred steps—and looked down on Paris and its river and away to the hills, and realised how much better it was to be a live dog than a dead lion.

For the tomb of St. Geneviève we have only a few steps to take, since it stands, containing all of her that was not burned, in the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont. The first martyr, although he gives his name to the church and is seen suffering the stone-throwers in the relief over the door, is, however, as nothing. St. Geneviève is the true patron.

St. Etienne's is one of the most interesting churches in Paris, without and within. The façade is bizarre and attractive, with its jumble of styles, its lofty tower and Renaissance trimmings, and the sacristan's prophet's-house high up, on the northern side of the odd little extinguisher. You see this best, and his tiny watchdog trotting up and down his tiny garden, by descending the hill a little way and then turning. Within, the church is fascinating. The pillars of the very lofty nave and aisles are slender and sure, the vaulting is delicate and has a unique carved marble rood-loft to divide the nave from the choir, stretching right along the church, with a rampe of great beauty. The pulpit is held up by Samson seated upon his lion and grasping the jawbone of an ass.

The last time I saw this pulpit was during the Fête of St. Geneviève, which is held early in January, when it contained a fluent nasal preacher to whom a congregation that filled every seat was listening with rapt attention. At the same time a moving procession of other worshippers was steadily passing the tomb, which was a blaze of light and heat from some hundreds of candles of every size. The man in front of me in the queue, a stout bourgeois, with his wife and two small daughters, bought four candles at a franc each. He was all nervousness and anxiety before then, but having watched them lighted and placed in position, his face became tranquil and gay, and they passed quickly out, re-entered their motor-cab and returned to the normal life.

Outside the church was a row of stalls wholly given up to the sale of tokens of the saint—little biographies, medals, rosaries, and all the other pretty apparatus of the long-memoried Roman Catholic Church. I bought a silver pendant, a brief biography, and a tiny metal statue. I feel now that had I also bought a candle, as I was minded to, I should have escaped the cold that, developing two or three days later, kept me in bed for nearly a fortnight. One must be thorough.