Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
Passing down Rue des Pyrénées, connected on either side with short
old-time streets and passages, we come to the Square Gambetta, often
called Square Père-Lachaise, and the immense Paris cemetery, the great
point of interest of the 20th arrondissement. The site was known in
long-past days as the Champ de l’Evêque--the bishop’s field. It was
presently put to a very unecclesiastical use, for a rich grocer bought
the land and built thereon a _folie_, i.e. an extravagant mansion. In
the seventeenth century the Jesuits bought the property and named it
Mont-Louis. Louis XIV paid a visit to the Jesuits there and subsequently
bought the estate and gave it to his confessor, Père Lachaise. When Père
Lachaise died the Jesuits regained the property, held it till the
Revolution, when it was seized by the State and became the possession of
the Municipality. Passing along the avenues and alleys of this vast,
silent city on the hill-side, we see tombs of every possible description
and style, wonderful monuments and mortuary chapels, some very
beautiful, others ...! and a huge crematorium. Men and women of many
nations and of many varying creeds are gathered there. Seen on the eve
of All Saints’ Day or the day following, when fresh flowers are on every
grave, lamps burning in almost every tombstone chapel, the relatives and
the friends of the dead crowding in reverent attitude along its paths,
the scene is singularly impressive.
On its north-east boundary we find the tragic Mur des Fédérés, the wall
against which the insurgents were shot after the Commune in 1871.
Blood-red scarves, blood-red wreaths mark the graves there, and we see
the names of many who had no graves on that spot chalked up against that
tragic wall.
[Illustration: LE MUR DES FÉDÉRÉS]
On the south side of the cemetery, running eastward, we turn into the
old Rue de Bagnolet, the road leading to the village of the name. Old
houses line this street and the streets adjoining it, and half-way up
its incline on the little Place St-Blaise we see the ancient church
St-Germain de Charonne, dating from the eleventh century. An inscription
on a wall within tells us Germain, the busy bishop of Auxerre, first met
Geneviève of Nanterre here, and tradition says the future patron saint
of Paris took her vows on the spot. There was an oratory on the site in
the fifth century or little later. The eleventh-century edifice was
rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but we still see some of the blackened
walls of the earlier structure. The _chevet_, i.e. the chancel-end, was
destroyed in the wars of the Fronde. We see, distinctly traced, the
space it occupied bounded by the Mur des Sœurs, against which in
long-gone days were no doubt stalls for the nuns of a neighbouring
convent. Some ancient tombstones, too, are there, once within the
chancel. Mounting the broad steps we enter the old church to find
curious old pillars, ancient inscriptions, coats of arms, and in one
chapel a little good old glass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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