Une jour on dira de moi, ce qu’on a dit des autres;
Marie Anne Palet est morte, et l’on n’en parlera plus.
This one is pretty:
Pauvre Marie,
A 29 Ans!
There is a still prettier one of the same kind at New York. “My Mother.”
The simple language of the heart succeeds better in epitaphs than the “lettered Muse;” for grief at the dissolution of natural ties is usually more intense amongst the poor than the rich; this is notoriously manifest in the funeral ceremonies of Père la Chaise. How indeed should any lady not rejoice when her lord is dead, if she looks well in black? and my young lord who has popped into an estate and title, how should he be sorry? One ought not, however, to blame the rich for exhibiting the signs of woe even where the reality is deficient. The affectation of a virtue is better than the neglect of it; but I would not have it carried to a ridiculous excess. I have heard of a French nobleman here, a M. Brumoi, who, at his mother’s death, put his park into mourning; he craped his deer; put black fish in his ponds; and brought from Paris several barrels of ink to supply his jets d’eaux. And every one has read of the Danish count, who had his statue placed by the grave of his wife upon a spring, causing the water to spurt through one of the eyes. This statue exists yet near Copenhagen, and is called the “Weeping Eye.”—You will often see, amongst the poor of Père la Chaise, a half-grown girl kneeling by the fresh earth after the convoy has departed, or a mother lingering over the grave of her child.
I ascended the hill again by the east side. Only think of walking upon the very earth consecrated so often by the pious footsteps of Madame de Maintenon. It was here she poured out her little peccadillos into the bosom of Père la Chaise. She brought him out from his obscurity of schoolmaster of Lyons, and raised him to the dignity of confessor (some say rival) to the king. This father was of extraordinary personal beauty, and polished manners. When he had stepped into the graces of the king, he used the royal favour to enrich himself and his order. His style of living was magnificent, his equipages gorgeous, and in his costly banquets he rivalled the most sumptuous monarchs. To gain admission to his soirées was a favour solicited by princes. He was crafty, wily, subtle, and eloquent, says Duclos, and he alarmed or soothed the conscience of the king as best suited his interests. “He surprises his Majesty,” says Madame de Maintenon, “into the most boundless liberality, by the mere force of his eloquence.” The king pronounced himself, the éloge of his confessor at his death in 1709. “He was always,” says his Majesty, “of a forgiving temper.”
On the site of these tombs, were once his pleasure grounds, and here the proud Jesuit often stood and looked down upon the court and city at his feet. The ruins of his elegant summer palace have perished, but a part of his orchard still remains. I walked up through a low valley, once the channel of a stream that had supplied the water pots, the cascades, and fountains of this reverend father. It is a romantic spot, but barren of trees and shrubbery. I would plant here the drooping willow, the cypress of hoary gray; and I would teach the jay bird, in its plumage of crape, to build here its nest; and, while ambition climbs the summit of the hill, the tender poets and the unfortunate lovers should come to be buried in this melancholy valley.
It is an advantage of eternity, that one may squander as much as one pleases of it without diminishing the capital. I found that the sun of our world was descending fast upon the roofs of St. Cloud, and I was obliged to run over an acre or two of graves with only a general stare. I hurried about in search of several I had heard distinguished for their splendour, but in vain. There should be a “directory” to tell us where the dead people live. I stumbled at last upon a whole plot of English, coteried apart near the wall side; General Murray; Cochran, brother of the admiral; Caroline Sydney Smith, my lady Campbell, Captain O’Conner, and other august personages. Their tombs are very genteel. An Englishman always seems to me (foolishly perhaps) a greater man than a Frenchman, and a Roman than a Greek, with the same degree of merit. The one, I believe, makes his wisdom pass for more, the other for less than it is worth. The great polish of the human character diminishes its solidity. Lord Chesterfield would have been a greater man if he had been more an Englishman.
Lord Bacon and Shakspeare both say, that a certain reserve of speech and manner adds to the general opinion of one’s merits. The Frenchman wastes, and the Englishman husbands his greatness; the latter hides his little passions, and does small things by deputy. Like Moses, he retires into the mountain, and bids Aaron “speak unto the children of Israel.” But the truth is, there is an illusion in my mind at present about all that is English; I have been so long over head and ears in French people. I read over these English graves as a studious school-boy his lesson.
Whilst perusing this page of the great volume, I came with astonishment, not expecting such a rencontre, upon the names of several of our own countrymen, and even of our own townsmen. Of Philadelphia were William Temple Franklin, Adam Seybert, our old congressman and chemist, Samuel Rawlston and Jacob Girard Koch; he who used to “breakfast with the Houris and quaff nectar with Jove at noon.” His great regret, they say, in dying, was an apprehension that there might not be good dinners in the other world. There is here an eloquent and simple tomb upon the grave of Miss Butler, who was cut off in the expectation of unusual accomplishments and in the roseate freshness of her youth.