Leaving the Place du Trône on the city side, by the first street to the left we enter a quiet quarter of Paris which the tide of life rarely invades. These streets are of the oldest in Paris, and this convent before us, now called the Sacred Heart, was once that of the Bernardin-Benedictin, into which Jean Valjean penetrated, and I must confess that it is with him rather than the illustrious dead that my thoughts are busy as we draw up before the gates. The whole neighbourhood seems deserted, the yellow streets are as silent as the convent and its grave-yard, and one wonders over which of these walls Jean Valjean made that wonderful escape into this abode of Perpetual Adoration, of Perpetual Silence. [Illustration: THE TOMB OF LAFAYETTE IN THE PICPUS CEMETERY, PARIS From a photograph] But our George has jangled the porter's bell and the gate is shortly opened by a sad-faced Sister, who, with down-cast eyes conducts us through the long convent gardens, past the buildings which one may not enter, and into an oblong enclosure crowded with flat tombstones, upon which as we pass down the walks we read the most historical names in France, until upon reaching the last in the line, the name of La Fayette is before us. Two little American flags adorn it and hang motionless in the quiet air. But even La Fayette's tomb cannot hold our thoughts long here. The eye is irresistibly drawn to a small door in a wall just beyond it, guarded by an iron grill and surmounted by a tablet bearing a simple inscription. Gazing inward you see a space some seventy-five feet square and guarded by high walls. Its grass is shaded by some cypress trees, a simple iron cross rises in the centre. There are no stones or monuments of any sort to mark this last resting place of the flower of the French aristocracy. Thirteen hundred and six were brought here from the Place du Trône and were cast pell mell into the fosse. [Illustration: THE CEMETERY OF THE PICPUS. LAFAYETTE'S TOMB ON THE RIGHT, TABLET TO ANDRÉ CHÉNIER ON THE LEFT From a photograph by the author]