In the side aisle, on the south, is a little door leading through a garden, formerly the graveyard, to the presbytère. This, in summer, forms a charming little picture. In one of the side chapels (Notre-Dame de l'Espérance) is a 15th century wall-painting of The Resurrection of the Dead; and in the chapel of the chevet a Preaching of John the Baptist, also in fresco. In the apse are a series of fluted and spiral columns. The bosses are many of them ornamented with figures—the Annunciation, S. Anne and S. Joachim at the golden gate, a Holy Face, and a chalice surmounted by the host.
A number of distinguished persons were buried at S. Séverin: Étienne Pasquier, an eloquent Avocat-Général under Henri III. who was mainly instrumental in causing the exclusion of the Jesuits from the University, and who died in 1615; the brothers Saint-Martre, celebrated men of letters living at the beginning of the 17th century; and Moreri, the author of the Dictionnaire Historique, who died in 1680.
There are only three ancient epitaphs remaining—that of Nicolas de Bomont, who died in 1540; Guillaume Fusée, president of the Parliament of Paris, and of his wife, Jeanne Desportes, who made several pious foundations in 1521; and Jean Baptiste Altin, conseilleur au Châtelet, who died in 1640. The first, Nicolas Bomont, his wife, and fifteen children, are represented as pigmy personages praying at the foot of the Crucified. The emblems upon the Altin slab have been borrowed from the Roman catacombs; and the epitaph is as follows:
ALTINI PECCATORIS OSSA
HIC JACENT,
PIE JESU MISERERE EIUS
TU VIATOR PRECARE PRO EO
VIX
AN
PLU