I found myself at length upon a street crowded with most remarkable personages; but so many, that I must put you off as Homer did with his ships. Here was François Neufchatel, a minister of the Interior, and author in prose and rhyme, who sung, tour à tour, Marie Antoinette and the Republic, who loved Napoleon and the Empire, and rejoiced at the Restoration. In his vicinity was Regnaud St. Jean d’Angely, who used to put off his brass for gold, his words for wisdom, and sometimes, in America, his travelling mistress for his wife.
“Le meme jour a vu finir
Ses maux, son exil, et sa vie!”
And here too was the stern and philanthropic Lanjuinais, who conjured up a devil he could not lay, in the revolution; and the great jurist Cambacérés—under Louis XVI. a squire of Montpelier, under the Convention, Citizen Cambacérés; Colleague of Bonaparte in the consulate, and President, Duke, Prince, and Marshal of the Empire under Napoleon. The sword sometimes yields to the gown, and the laurel to the toga. He died with all the decorations of Europe about his neck. I would have graven the Code Napoleon upon his tomb. Remember to give him the credit for dissuading the execution of the Duke d’Enghein, the Russian and Spanish campaigns, and the continuation of the war after Dresden. But he never put his honours to the hazard of dissuading any thing very strenuously; like Piso, the Roman, he never differed long in opinion with a “man who had ten legions.”
Do let me introduce you to Monsieur Denon; he loved the ladies so, and what is more, the ladies loved him; he first taught us to read hieroglyphics, and brought us news out of Egypt about Pharoah and the Ptolemies, and he brought over that great “Zodiac of Dendera” in the king’s library;—and to M. Messier, who did not know there was a Revolution in France, being very busy about the revolution of the stars. While his wife was dying, he asked a few minutes’ absence to look after a comet. He died himself in looking through a telescope, and his friends had but one eye to close on that occasion. Not a word to Chenier, the Jacobin poet; the world has not yet made up its mind about his merits; nor to Parny, whose poetry is good enough to deserve your contempt, pure and unqualified. A lyre hangs upon the tomb of Grêtry, and a globe in flames upon Madame Blanchard.
If I had time, I would inveigh here against the audacity of woman. She kills tyrants, commits suicide, and goes up in balloons. She leaves us nothing, unless going to war, and scarcely that, to characterize our manhood. A Roman Emperor was obliged to forbid her, by an edict, the profession of the gladiators.—I must not pass unnoticed M. Pinée, who passed his life, and with some success, in teaching crazy folks to be reasonable—those in the mad-house. And those two brothers, not less worthy than the best, they who gave eyes to the blind and ears to the dumb, Haüy and Sicard;—they must not be forgotten; and here is a poor poet (excuse the tautology) who is buried as decently as if he had made sausages.
I will conclude this part of my catalogue, already as long as Lloyd’s or Homer’s, with a Scotch cousin of mine, Mr. Justice. He left his wife, young, amiable, and beautiful as she was, in Edinburgh, for the pleasures of Paris; which pleasures brought him in time to the prison of St. Pelagie. His wife (I will inquire after her health when I go to Scotland) flew to his rescue. She could not procure his enlargement on account of the greatness of his debts, but she stayed with him in the prison, attended him in his illness, and consoled him, and reformed him in his dying moments. She has placed here a modest tomb upon his grave.
If you hear any one speak ill of a woman, have him taken out and fifty lashes given him on my account. I will settle all the costs and damages at the Common Pleas.
We are now upon the summit. This site is unrivalled in beauty. Montroye, Sêvres, Meudon, Mount Calvary, and St. Cloud, are spread before us in the distant prospect. The eye, too, rests upon the green fields and flowery pastures of Montreuil, and forests of Vincennes; and at our feet is that great miracle of the world, Paris; its gilded towers, domes, and palaces, glittering in the sun; and the frequent hearse is bringing up its daily contribution of the inhabitants. It is near the close of a fine day of autumn. The yellow leaf detached from its branch, comes lingering and flutters towards the earth, and is trodden upon by the passers by; others on the same branch are yet green, or tinged with the blight of the first frosts.
That Xerxes, in contemplating his multitudinous legions, should weep over the prospect of their mortality, he being on the very errand of killing men, seems to me a notable absurdity; but that I, who leave them to die just as they please, should weep a little, in a place so favourable to such emotions, would be reasonable enough. While I stood here yesterday and looked down upon this hive of human beings; listened to the hum of its many voices, and saw the silent earth open to receive all this life and animation: when I looked upon the many graves of my own countrymen here, and reflected that to-morrow—to-morrow, far from my friends and native country, I might become one of the number! Why, I would have wept outright, if my manhood had not interfered. After all, such feelings were perhaps more remarkable in Xerxes; and Herodotus was right to give him, and not me, credit with posterity. Common passions in common men are not subjects of history; but that the “king of kings,” who challenged mountains, and fettered oceans, and led myriads to slaughter, should yet have his lucid intervals of humanity—this is a matter worthy of record.
This is the choice spot of the cemetery. It is the spot distinguished for the best society. It is covered with the richest array of tombs, and all the arts of statuary, sculpture and architecture have employed their best skill upon its embellishment. It is the aristocracy of the grave. Here are the Peeresses, the Princesses, and High Mightinesses. The rich house of Ormesson, Montausin and Montmorency, and “all the blood of all the Howards,” are upon this Hill. “Ici repose très haute, et très puissante dame, Emma Coglan, Duchesse de Castries;” and here is the proud mausoleum of Russian Kate’s superb noblewoman, Madame Demidoff; which, although in bad taste, deserves, for its richness, whole days of admiration to itself. Not one of the cleverest of the Parisians is a match for this fur-clad damsel of the Neva. Here, too, is Joseph, the money changer, and other men of arithmetic; the Barings and the Rothschilds of Père la Chaise, with winged goddesses perched upon their tombs where ought to be Multiplication Tables. And finally ministers and great marshals of France, all who have not been ashamed to come to the term of life according to the due course of mortality, are buried here. Here with images of their living features, upon pyramids that pierce the skies,—