An accident threw me into the way of understanding the poet's intention. On a certain memorable day, my wife and I repaired to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, to visit before winter the burial-places of my family, the tomb which reunites my father and his grandson. This latter had been born to me in the very year which terminated the first half of the present century, and I had named him Lazarus in my devout hope of the Awakening of the Nations. I had imagined that I saw upon his countenance a gleam, as it were, of the strong and tender thoughts which throbbed in my heart at that last moment of my teaching. Oh, vanity of human hopes! This flower of my autumn, which I yearned to animate with the potent vitality that had been of too tardy development in myself, disappeared almost in the act of birth. And there was no help but to deposit my child at the feet of my father, who had already been four years dead. Two cypresses which I then planted in that ill-omened nook of clay have acquired in the brief interval an extraordinary growth. Two, nay, three times taller than myself, they clothe their vigorous branches with a young, rich foliage which ever points towards heaven. If, with an effort, you lower them, they rear themselves again, in all their pride and strength, flourishing with a marvellous pith, as if they had drank from the earth where I planted them the precious treasure of my past and my unconquerable aspiration. While revolving these thoughts I ascended the hill, and before arriving at the tomb, which is situated in the upper alley, I made this observation,--that though I had on so many occasions frequented this melancholy and beautiful spot, having been in earlier life the most assiduous visitor of the dead, I had scarcely ever seen any insects in the Père-Lachaise. Hardly even at the great epoch of the flowers, when everything is covered with bloom, and numbers of the old deserted sepulchres are embowered in roses, I had not remarked that animal life abounded there as it abounds elsewhere. Very few birds, and very few insects. Why? I could not say. While making this reflection, we had finished climbing the hill; we stood in front of the tomb. And there, with admiration, with a species of astonishment, I found a surprising contradiction of what I had just been saying.