The service of the Pompes funèbres is placed under the surveillance of the Préfet of the Seine. The administration centrale may be addressed directly by telephone, to 104 Rue d'Aubervilliers, when required, or application may be made to the bureau of the Pompes funèbres in each Mairie, or to their agents in each arrondissement. There is a conseil d'administration of thirteen members, elected, ten by the city churches, one by the consistory of the Reformed Church, one by the consistory of the Confession d'Augsbourg, and one by the Israelite consistory. This conseil represents the fabriques—that is to say, the revenues and property—of the parochial churches, divided into ten circonscriptions, and the consistories of the non-Catholic churches of the city. There is also a vicar-general, delegated by the Archbishop of Paris, who is a member of the conseil, and ranks next to the president.
The expense of a funeral, of course, varies very greatly. An ordinary coffin costs from eight francs to forty-four. The municipal tax, which brings in to the city treasury annually some eight hundred and sixty thousand francs, is included in the cost of each class of funeral, and varies from forty francs for the first and second classes to six francs for the ninth. For the convois catholiques, the expense is from eight thousand to ten thousand francs for the first class; for the convois protestants, four thousand two hundred to seven thousand five hundred for first class; for the enterrements israelites, two thousand nine hundred at the most. The ninth, or cheapest, class of funeral, of all these may be had for eighteen francs seventy-five centimes for the Catholic, nine francs for the Protestant, and three francs for the Israelite. These figures vary according to the parish, the size of the church or temple, etc., but they generally include the decoration of the residence, the draping of the place of worship in which the service is held, the payment for this religious service, etc., but not the cost of the coffin, of the land in the cemetery, of the tickets of invitation or notices of death, and other details. In the Jewish service, there is an item of a thousand francs for the choir, either at the dwelling or in the cemetery. For the convois civils, where there is no official religious service, the price varies from eighteen hundred and fifty to twenty-four hundred francs for the first class to nine francs for the ninth. For incinerations, the cost is about the same, adding the tax to be paid the city,—three hundred francs for the first class, and fifty for the sixth, seventh, and eighth. A permit for a gratuitous interment may be obtained by presenting at the Mairie a certificate of indigence obtained from the Commissaire de Police upon application sustained by two witnesses in good standing.
As in every other important event of his life, the Parisian is obliged in this—the last—to occupy himself with the official procès-verbaux of his état civil. At his decease, an acte must be drawn up, upon the declaration of two witnesses, if possible the nearest relatives, or neighbors, giving his name, Christian name, profession, age, place of birth, domicile, those of his father and mother, and those of the attestors, with an indication of their relationship if they are relations; stating whether the deceased was married or widowed, and, in either case, the name and Christian name of his spouse. No operation upon the corpse, such as autopsy, embalming, or taking a cast, can be performed before the expiration of twenty-four hours after death, and then only upon the authorization of the Préfecture de Police, and in the presence of the Commissaire de Police of the quarter. This authorization is granted only upon the statements of two doctors,—one of the official Médecins de l'État Civil, and another physician, sworn and delegated for the occasion. The family must preserve and produce upon the demand of the Médecin de l'État Civil all the prescriptions of the doctor who had attended the deceased in his last illness; they must also give the name and address of the doctor and of the druggist who prepared the prescriptions. It is also forbidden to clothe the body or place it in the coffin, or to cover the face, before the expiration of twenty-four hours,—a light veil of very thin gauze alone is permitted. It cannot be denied that these are all very intelligent precautions.
In these funeral processions, the public authority is represented by the ordonnateur des Pompes funèbres; "it is he who, from the residence of the defunct to his last resting-place, never quits him, watching over him like a faithful friend." His official costume has been modified of late years,—he now wears a red and blue scarf, a cockade with the two colors, and his insignia is embroidered on the collar of his coat. The Napoleonic cocked hats, black garments, and high boots of the drivers of the hearses are familiar sights in the streets of the capital, especially in the neighborhood of the cemeteries, driving slowly at the head of their mournful processions, or, in their moments of relaxation, descended from the heights of their sable chariots and drinking familiarly at the zinc bar of a workman's wine-shop, side by side, it may be, with the white blouses of masons and plasterers. The four hundred porteurs of the Pompes funèbres still retain their ancient familiar designation of croque-morts, concerning the derivation of which there is much uncertainty. A number of the Revue des traditions populaires suggests that it may come from the mediæval custom of biting the little finger of the deceased at the moment of placing in the coffin, in order to obtain a final assurance of death. At the masked balls of the Opéra, these personages are represented by the traditional Père Bazouge and the cheerful Clodoche,—shedding their decorum with their official costumes.
By the decree of 1804, which forbade all inhumations within the walls of the capital, it was provided that there should be established cemeteries outside the city limits, and at a distance of not less than thirty-five or forty mètres. Four such enclosures were ordained: the Cimetière du Nord, or of Montmartre, on the north; that de l'Est, or of Père-Lachaise, on the east; that du Sud, or of Vaugirard, on the south, and that of Sainte-Catherine. The first of these was already in existence, having been established in 1798 by the municipal administration, to replace that in the plain of Clichy, comparatively new, which had replaced the old one of Saint-Roch. The Montmartre cemetery occupied the site of an abandoned and very extensive plaster quarry, whence it took its popular name of Cimetière des Grandes-Carrières, and it was also known, more poetically, as the Champ de repos, while the Montparnasse, later, was given that of Champ d'asile. When the city limits were enlarged, in 1859, Montmartre, in common with other communes of the suburbs, was brought within the enclosure, and, after the creation of the new cemetery of Saint-Ouen, called by the people Cayenne, the only interments in Montmartre were those made in the vaults of certain private families.
Père-Lachaise, the most important and most picturesque of these enclosures in Paris, takes its name from the confessor of Louis XIV, to whom it was presented by his royal penitent. The Cimetière de l'Est was inaugurated, in 1804, in a locality which originally bore the name of Champ l'Évêque, because it had been the property of the Bishop of Paris. The Jesuits purchased it, in 1626, under cover of a private individual, and established there a country house, surrounded by trees and shrubbery, the site of which is indicated to-day very nearly by the central rond-point of the cemetery. Popular report ascribed to this pleasure-house a character in keeping with the hypocrisy and luxury of the order as painted by its enemies; and young Louis XIV visited it, in consequence of which it became known as Mont-Louis. Afterward, when in the possession of the royal confessor,—who said, himself, of his office: "Bon Dieu! quel rôle!"—it was still further enlarged, and the grounds handsomely laid out around his little villa, two stories in height, overlooking Paris. At his death, it came again into the possession of the fathers of his order, and at their suppression, in 1763, it was sold to pay their creditors. The Préfet of the Seine purchased it for its conversion into a municipal cemetery in 1804.
That of Vaugirard was situated near the ancient barrière and at the entrance of what was then the village of Vaugirard; it had in nowise the importance of the two just mentioned, and was much more the burial-ground of the poor than of the rich. As early as 1810, its insufficience was recognized, and in 1824 it was closed, and replaced by that of Montparnasse. The Cimetière Sainte-Catherine was in the quarter Saint-Marcel, by the side of the old cemetery of Clamart, which was full of bodies and closed in 1793; Sainte-Catherine was also replaced by Montparnasse in 1824. The latter, the necropolis of the left bank of the Seine, is the least interesting and least visited of any of the Parisian cemeteries. The ground is quite level, and the enclosure so crowded with tombs that there is very little space left for verdure or shade. The number of distinguished dead who rest here is also less than in either Père-Lachaise or Montmartre. Previous to 1824, it received only the human débris from the hospitals and the bodies of criminals from the neighboring scaffold. Vaugirard and Sainte-Catherine have since been completely removed, and the sites devoted to other uses; and the number of ancient urban cemeteries that have thus disappeared is very considerable. That of the old church of Saint-Roch is now traversed by the narrow streets which enclose the church; that of Saint-Gervais is buried under the caserne Lobau, back of the Hôtel de Ville; Sainte-Marguerite-Saint-Antoine, in which were placed the remains of the young dauphin, is now a waste land; Saint-Joseph, and the little Cimetière de la Chapelle Marcadet which was used during the siege of 1871, are now occupied by commercial or secular establishments. Among those the sites of which are still recognizable are Saint-Vincent and Saint-Pierre at Montmartre; Saint-Médard—so famous in the last century as the scene of the extravagances of the convulsionnaires and the alleged miracles on the tomb of the Jansenist deacon, Paris—has been only partially destroyed by the opening of the Avenue des Gobelins; and on the old Cimetière de la Madeleine now rises the Chapelle Expiatoire to the memory of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.
Each of the great cemeteries, both within and without the walls, is under the charge of a conservateur, having under him a receiver or steward, a surveyor, clerks, guardians, and grave-diggers. The guards, who number in all a hundred and thirty-five, including five brigadiers and fifteen sous-brigadiers, have all been sworn into office and are empowered to draw up procès-verbaux. The landscape-gardening of the cemeteries is all under the direction of the service des promenades, and the municipal administration of the city of Paris takes a laudable pride in maintaining the picturesqueness and attractiveness of these places of sepulchre. Many of the tombs, or funerary monuments, are preserved through legacies or donations, and the city assumes the care of others possessing an historical or patriotic interest, as those of Abélard and Héloïse, of Molière, of La Fontaine, of Casimir Périer, and the "four sergeants of La Rochelle." Consequently, the cemeteries of the capital are, distinctly, one of the features of the city,—Père-Lachaise, particularly, is a most curious, picturesque, original, and characteristic "sight," and, alike on the day of Toussaints when they are visited by the populace almost en masse, and when they receive the solitary funeral procession winding slowly through the streets, the carriages followed by a long train of mourners on foot, they may be said to be truly representative institutions of this people with whom we are for the moment concerned.