Who could be otherwise than powerfully affected, as I was, by the first objects that presented themselves to me on entering the place?--A mother and her two sons, kneeling in pious devotion at the foot of the husband's and the father's grave! At a short distance, a female of elegant form, watering and dressing the earth around some plants at her lover's tomb!--not a day, and seldom an hour, passes, but some one is seen either weeping over the remains of a departed relative, or watching with pious solicitude the flowers that spring up around it.
Among the many interesting objects that presented themselves at my first visit, was the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse, which had not long since been removed from the convent of the Augustins, where I had seen it in 1815.
At a little distance, to the left of the former, was the burial place of Labédoyère. The fate of this brave and unfortunate officer is well known; his youth, and misled zeal, have procured him a sympathy which his fellow sufferer Marshal Ney did not find, and did not merit.
In the centre of a square plot of ground enclosed with lattice work, is erected a wooden cross, painted black. Neither marble, nor stone, nor letters, indicate his name. Two pots of roses, and a tuft of violets, alone marked the spot, which is carefully weeded. There is something more affecting in all this simplicity, something, in my mind, that goes more directly home to the heart, than in the most splendid monument or the most studied eulogium. As we came suddenly up we saw two females clad in deep mourning, weeping over it; at each arm of the cross was suspended a garland of flowers; we were about to retire again immediately, from the fear of disturbing their melancholy devotions, when the concierge, with a brutality indescribable, rushed forward, and removing the garlands, threw them among the shrubs at a considerable distance. The friend who accompanied me, after searching, recovered one of the garlands, and with more gallantry perhaps than policy, immediately replaced it, and reproaching the keeper with his unmanly conduct, vowed vengeance if he dared to interrupt the ladies, again, when bowing to them we retired.
As we were about to quit the place some time after, we were arrested by two gendarmes, and it was not till after a detention of some hours, and a long discussion between the police officers who had been summoned to attend, and being threatened to be sent to the Conciergerie prison, that we were allowed to depart.
The following words were engraved on a plain marble slab that covered the remains of Marshal Ney.
CI GIT
LE MARÉCHAL NEY
DUC D'ECHLINGEN
PRINCE DE MOSCOWA
DÉCÉDÉ le 7, Decembre, 1815.
The grave of the Marshal, as well as that of Labédoyère, when I again visited the spot, had been stripped of every thing, and the railing around them removed so as to prevent any one from discovering the place of their interment.
The monument of Madame Cottin, the author of Elizabeth and of Mathilde, is, like her writings, simple and affecting!-Surrounded by a trellis work in the form of an arbour, planted with rose trees, stands a pillar of the whitest marble, highly polished, inclining forwards, and engraved with:
ICI REPOSE
Marie-Sophie Risteav
Veuve de J.M. Cottin
Décédée le 25 Août.
1815.