Many of the details gathered by M. Havard in the course of his careful inspection of these respect-compelling enclosures are worthy of preservation. In Père-Lachaise, for example, it is well not to be too credulous. "You may there discover, in fact, very many tombs decorated with names familiar in various ways, and even very great names, which certainly have never contained the ashes of those whose memory they honor. Neither Lavoisier, nor Lesurques, 'victim of the most deplorable of judicial errors,' as his epitaph says, nor General Malet, whose body was interred in the cemetery of executed criminals, would be able to find themselves under the monuments which a posthumous piety has reared to them. The same can be said of the tombs of Racine, of Molière, and of La Fontaine, which were the first to embellish these groves, and of which the style proclaims clearly enough that they do not date further back than the First Empire. It is the same for Héloïse and Abélard, and for their graceful little structure to which the lovers and the newly married do not fail to pay pious visits. This historic tomb, constructed of composite materials, is also of very recent erection. The two statues ornamented, in the last century, the monument which stood in the Abbaye de Paraclet; from there they were transported at first to the Musée des Petits-Augustins, and, in 1817, to the place where we now see them. The graceful canopy which covers them is formed of materials borrowed from the ancient Abbaye de Nogent-sur-Marne. As to the ashes of these perfect lovers, they have been scattered to the winds for a great many centuries." Many of the old cemeteries in the city, he says, owe their temporary celebrity to the accidental interment within their enclosures of some particularly illustrious deceased. "That which surrounded Saint-Roch received the remains of Corneille. It is known that Molière was secretly buried in the Cimetière de Saint-Joseph, which received also the body of La Fontaine. As to the little cemetery of Saint-Gervais, we should be ignorant of its existence if the authors of the seventeenth century had not taken pains to reveal to us that Marion Delorme was there laid to rest. Still more, the fact would have remained unknown had it not been for the whim of her family which, after having crowned her with a wreath of orange flowers, had the assurance to accord her the funeral of a virgin. The curé of Saint-Gervais, who had received her confession, opposed this masquerading, and he did well. Let us not laugh too much at these curious pretensions. At Père-Lachaise, in the chapel in which Mlle. Mars reposes, there can be seen very clearly, through the gratings of the door, a wreath of white roses and orange flowers." [Illustration: TOMB OF ABÉLARD AND HÉLOÏSE, CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LACHAISE.]