The graves of the poor are in a division by themselves. Here I found on many—particularly on the graves of children—monuments that seemed to me much more attractive and more touching than the tombs of the rich. They consisted of little glass cases, containing tiny altars, on which the favorite playthings of the dead babies were displayed. In one I noticed a tiny basket, in which lay the thimble and sewing implements of some industrious little worker whose labor here on earth was finished—a simple memorial, but one that spoke eloquently to the heart!
The cemetery of Père la Chaise was not opened till the year 1804; it contains 100 acres, and is entirely surrounded by a high wall. The view from the hill that rises in the midst is the best reward for a very toilsome walk.
I could only pay a flying visit to the Jardin des Plantes and the Museum. The wealth of the former in exotic plants and animals is well known; both institutions are reckoned among the most remarkable in Europe.
I was much pleased with my visit to the Manufacture des Gobelins, or, as I might term it, Picture Carpet. This tapestry is wrought with such perfection, that a close inspection is required to convince the beholder he is gazing, not at an oil-painting, but a woven fabric. The drawing is very correct, and the mingling and transition of the various colors delicate and finished, as if a practiced pencil had been at work. For hours I stood watching the workmen, without obtaining the slightest clew to the secret of the art they practiced. The workman has a kind of large frame before him, on which the threads, or tissue, or warp (I am unacquainted with the right term) are perpendicularly fastened; at his side he has a huge basket of Berlin wool, wound on shuttles, and of all imaginable hues and shades. The picture he has to copy is not a worked pattern divided into squares, but an oil-painting; and it is not placed in front of the artistic weaver, but behind him. He works at the wall of threads before him, beginning from below and making his way upward, without even sketching the picture he wants to copy; I noticed some workmen, however, who had indicated the part at which they were working—a foot, for instance, or a hand—by a few strokes on the edge of the frame. Those men who imitate Persian and Indian carpets, producing fabrics a quarter of an inch thick, and which resembles cut velvet, have the original, also an oil-painting, suspended above their heads. In some apartments the most gorgeous Gobelins were displayed. They are very dear; a piece of tapestry, fifteen to twenty feet in height by eight or ten in breadth, will cost from 100,000 to 150,000 francs. But then a workman has frequently to labor for ten or more years at such a piece. The wages of the workmen are not very high; I was told, however, that after a certain number of years of service they receive a pension, which is granted in a shorter period should they become blind over their work—a calamity which not unfrequently befalls them.
My last visit was to the Morgue, where the bodies of persons found dead are exposed for identification by relatives or friends. Many of my readers will perhaps wonder how I, a woman, could visit such a place; but they must remember that, during my journeyings, I have frequently been face to face with death, and that its aspect, consequently, was less terrible to me than to the majority of people; and I can therefore look at times even with a kind of mournful complacency upon its image, mindful of that last journey all of us must take.
The Morgue is a large vaulted apartment, divided into two halves by a partition of glass. In the division behind the glass wall are six or eight low tables, or slabs, on which the corpses are laid out. The clothes they had on when found are hung upon the walls. The other half of the room is for the visitors, among whom, if any of the bodies show marks of violence, secret agents of the police are accustomed to mingle, to glean from the expression of countenance, or from any chance remark, a clew by which to track the criminal. The corpses are thus exposed for three days, but the clothes are left hanging for a longer period. The most terrible sights are sometimes seen here. Thus I saw a male corpse that had lain for some months in the water, and on the next table a young girl whose head had been completely cut off; it had afterward been sewn on the neck. The poor creature had been murdered by her lover through jealousy. A remarkable incident in this murder was that the perpetrator, disturbed in the very fact, leaped from the window of a room on the sixth story without injuring himself. He scrambled up from the ground and ran away. Three days afterward, when I left Paris, he had not been apprehended.
I was told that a few weeks before, some fishermen had brought in a table-leaf with the body of a woman tied to it, but the head and feet were missing. The fishermen had discovered the body in the river by chance; it had been weighted with stones, and sunk. All possible measures were immediately taken by the authorities to find the head and feet; and, contrary to expectation, they were eventually found, though hidden in separate places. The body was then put together and exposed in the Morgue. One of the secret agents quickly noticed among the spectators an old woman who could scarcely suppress an exclamation on seeing the corpse. When she left the room the agent requested her to accompany him to the commissary, and on being asked if she knew the deceased, she replied that she recognized in the poor creature a likeness to a woman who had lived in her neighborhood a short time ago, but who had lately removed to quite another quarter of the town. Farther questioning brought out the fact that the murdered woman had come from the provinces a few months before with a sum of money, intending to carry on some small trade in Paris; she made acquaintance with a man who professed himself willing to serve her, and announced to her, after a short time, that he had found a better and cheaper dwelling for her. She accepted his offer, left her old domicile without giving the address of her new one, and since that time nothing more had been heard of her. Inquiries were made of the commissionaires, or porters of the neighborhood, one of whom remembered carrying her luggage, and pointed out the house where he had deposited it. A secret agent betook himself thither, but found the door locked. At his summons the porter appeared. The agent asked him if a Monsieur X—— did not live in that house; and on receiving an answer in the negative, added, “That is very singular, for the address is quite correct,” at the same time showing a paper. The porter declared there must be some mistake, for the house belonged to Monsieur L——, who passed the greater part of the year in the country, but had given particular orders that not a single room should be let. The agent departed, but the house was watched, and at about eleven o’clock at night two suspicious-looking characters were seen to enter. After making sure that there was no other means of exit, a sufficient number of armed policemen rushed into the house, and secured the porter and his two associates without much resistance. The house was carefully searched, and in one of the rooms they discovered not only the frame-work of the table on a leaf of which the woman had been bound, but traces of blood, and the bloodstained axe with which the unhappy creature, lured into the house by the murderers, had been killed. But enough of these horrors, of which, alas! Paris offers but too many examples.
My excursions in the environs of the capital were limited to Versailles, Trianon, and St. Cloud, which I visited on one and the same day.
The railway takes one, in an hour, to Versailles, past the little town of Sèvres, celebrated for its great porcelain manufactory. Sèvres is picturesquely situated in a broad valley watered by the Seine. The railroad runs, throughout nearly the whole distance, parallel with the valley at a considerable elevation, so that the traveler sees the charming, highly-cultivated country gliding past like scenes in a magic lantern.
As regards Versailles itself, I candidly confess myself unable to describe it. I can only assure my readers that such splendor in buildings, gardens, halls, pictures, and general arrangements could only arise in France, under a king like Louis XIV., who rivaled the Romans themselves in luxury, and held the modest opinion that he was the state, and the people but an accessory to his greatness.