Opposite is an exquisite portrait-statue of the queen, her sinking figure supported by Religion. Anguish and resignation are blended in the beautiful face. Her regards, like those of the king, are directed upward. The features of Religion are Madame Elizabeth’s, the faithful sister of Louis, who perished by the guillotine May 12, 1794. Both groups are admirably wrought, and seen in the dim light of the stained windows, impressively life-like.
In the sub-chapel, gained by a winding stair, is an altar of black marble in a recess, marking the spot where the unfortunate pair were interred after their execution. The Madeleine was then unfinished, and in the orchard back of it the dishonored corpse of Louis, and, later, of his widow, were thrust into the ground with no show of respect or decency. The coffins were of plain boards; the severed heads were placed between the feet; quicklime was thrown in to hasten decomposition; the grave or pit was ten feet deep, and the soil carefully leveled. No pains were spared to efface from the face of the earth all traces of the victims of popular fury. But loving eyes noted the sacred place; kept watch above the mouldering remains until the nation turned to mourn over the slaughter wrought by their rage. Husband and wife were removed to the vaults of the Kings of France, at St. Denis, in 1817, by Louis Philippe. The consciences of himself and people fermented actively about that time, touching the erection of a monument expiatoire. The Place de la Concorde was re-christened “Place de Louis XVI.,” with the ulterior design of raising upon the site of his scaffold, obelisk or church, which should bear his name and be a token of his subjects’ contrition. To the like end, the king of the French proposed to change the Temple de la Gloire of Napoleon I.—otherwise the Madeleine—into an expiatory church, dedicated to the manes of Louis XVI., Louis XVII. (the little Dauphin), Marie Antoinette, and Madame Elizabeth, a hapless quartette whose memory needed rehabilitation at the hands of the reigning monarch and his loving subjects, if ever human remorse could atone for human suffering.
The Chapelle Expiatoire is the precipitate and settlement into crystallization of this mental and moral inquietude.
“No, madame!” said the custodian, in a burst of confidence. “We have not here the corpses of Louis XVI. and his queen. Their skeletons repose at St. Denis. But only their bones! For there are here”—touching the black marble altar—“the earth, the lime, the clothing that enclosed their bodies. And upon this spot was their deep, deep grave. People of true sensibility prefer to weep here rather than in the crypt of St. Denis!”
On the same day we saw St. Roch. Bonaparte planted his cannon upon the broad steps, October 3, 1795, and fired into the solid ranks of the advancing Royalists—insurgents now in their turn. The front of the church is scarred by the balls that returned the salute. The chief ornament of the interior is the three celebrated groups of statuary in the Chapelle du Calvaire. These—the Crucifixion, Christ on the Cross, and the Entombment—are marvelous in inception and execution. The small chapel enshrining them becomes holy ground even to the Protestant gazer. They moved us as statuary had never done before. Returning to them, once and again, from other parts of the church, to look silently upon the three stages in the Story that is above all others, we left them finally with lagging tread and many backward glances. At the same end of the church is the altar at which Marie Antoinette received her last communion, on the day of her death.
“Were they here, then?” we asked of the sacristan, pointing to the figures in the Chapelle du Calvaire.
“But certainly, Madame! They are the work, the most famous, of Michel Anguier, who died in 1686. The queen saw them, without doubt.”
While the bland weather lasted, we drove out to Père Lachaise, passing en route, the Prison de la Roquette, in which condemned prisoners are held until executed. The public place of execution is at its gates. This was a slaughter-pen during the Commune. The murdered citizens,—the Archbishop of Paris, and the curé of the Madeleine among them,—were thrown into the fosses communes of Père Lachaise. These common ditches, each capable of containing fifty coffins, are the last homes donated by the city of Paris to the poor who cannot buy graves for themselves. One is thankful to learn that the venerable Archbishop and his companions were soon granted worthier burial. Our cocher told us what may, or may not be true, that the last victim of the guillotine suffered here; likewise that one of the fatal machines is still kept within the walls ready for use.
For a mile—perhaps more—before reaching Père Lachaise, the streets are lined with shops for the exhibition and sale of flowers,—a few natural, many artificial,—wreaths of immortelles, yellow, white and black, and an incredible quantity of bugle and bead garlands, crosses, anchors, stars and other emblematic devices. Windows, open doors, shelves and pavement are piled with them. Plaster lambs and doves and cherubs, porcelain ditto; small glazed pictures of deceased saints, angels and other creatures; sorrowing women weeping over husbands’ death-beds, empty cradles and little graves,—all framed in gilt or black wood,—are among the merchandise offered to the grief-stricken. A few of the mottoes wrought into the immortelle and bead decorations will give a faint idea of the “Frenchiness” of the display.
“Hélas!” “À ma chère femme,” “Chère petite,” “Ah! mon amie,” “Bien-aimée,” “Chérie,” and every given Christian name known in the Gallic tongue.