The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1839-02-16

made his appearance He requested us to drly
a few hundred yards to shop farther on, q
which we quilted our carriages, leaving ther
with orders to the coachmen TO await our return
Here we procured supply of wax Candles
the peculiar construction used by wofkmeh, AM
others visiting the catacombs. froceealng SOM
distance farther down, the principal street nov
become an open road, we turned to the lett and en-
tered narrow alley, enclosed on either side b,
hioh wallis We we're now some distance beyont
the VILLAGE we had left the last houses and light
behind US and began to feel, as we entered hi
lonely and desoate avenue, that we had already
passed from the region of the living. Not tree
nor house was to be seen; nothing but the
two long, unbroken walls, which stretched before
us across the fields dead and cod and present
ing an appearance in perfect keeping with the
spot to which they led. The moon itself seemed
to throw an unearhy light over the uncultiva-
ted waste. We walked with rapid steps, which
the GOODNESS of the evening made necessary to oul
comfort, few hundred yards along this alley
when the guide suddenly stopped, unlocking a
door in the wall on our left. We entered an un-
covered yard, some sixty feet square, in one cor
ner Of which was small brick house, covering
the entrance to the catacombs. The door of this
little building being unfastened, we entered a
small upholstered apartment, and were not dis
pleased to exchange the npping cold Of the open
air, for the comfortable warmth proceeding from
the vaults below. The door being carefully lock-
ed from within, as soon as the necessary prepare
ttion of lighting our candles was completed, we
commenced the descent, the guide preceding US.
A winding stairway of stone, scarcely wide e.
nough to admit a single person of extraordina'
ry size, leads by flight of some eighty or ninety
steps, to the vaults. We found ourselves, on reach
ing the bottom, in broad, irregular passage
with black line, painted on the rough ceiling
ofsone, pointing out direct course to the entrance
ofthe great city of the dead. 1t is supposed that
the bones of more than three millions of people
are collected in the vast charnel-house, but the
space occupied by them forms very small portion
Of the quarries under the city. These excava-
tons compose a series of passages, from fifteen
to twenty feet in width, and ten or twelve in
height, running in every possible direction, and
intersecting each other so frequently, and at an
giles Irregular as to render it absolutely impossi
Bile to find ones way, but by the aid of some
such contrivance as line painted on the cell
ing. We proceeded some distance along one of
these passages, before reaching the portal of
the great cemetery. An appropriate inscription
reminded us that we had arrived at the awful
limits of this dread abode ofthe dead. We passed
within. Piles of human bones, several feet deep,
reached on either hand from the floor TO the
ceiling. A peculiar but not offensive smell
which ancied to proceed from these great
masses of Wondering bones, ossa non inoaora,
left an impression on my nerves | shall scarcely
ever forget. We wandered through these passa-
ges, examining, with curious attention, that
quite exhausted the patience of our guide, every
object that we passed. Innumerabe inscriptions,
from Latin and French poets, among whom Vir-
gil and J. B. Rousseau seemed the greatest IA
vorites, some full of tenderness and regret 9TH
ers of a more philosophizing but equally melan-
choly turn, caught our eyes wherever we turned.
The air of this subterranean world was of balmy
the surface on which we walked dry
and smooth and if one could he reconciled to
the mute society of this unliving multitude, and
to the endless night which pervades a region
where the sun never shone, and from which the
face of heaven is for ever shut out it would be
difficult to select a more enviable habiation.-
For some time found it absolutely impossible to
rid myself of the strange feelings excited by so
novel a situation. Enclosed in the very bosom of
he earth, a deep buried beneath the possibility
If human ssistance, our little party was surround
ID by three millions of the dead felt that the
most frivolous curiosity had led us to violate,
With irreverent steps, the solemn repose of the
grave. looked upon myself as criminal and
huddered as thought upon the dreadful punish
nent that might await our impious rashness. |
imagined every instant that should see the long
buried ghosts of the millions around me, rising
rom the dead, to avenge our sacrelgious pres t
nee. was overwhelmed with terror; | strain t
d my ears to catch the faintest sound fixed
ny eyes upon a skull, to see if its hideous
eatures changed its fixed grin of death. Not a
ound was heard nothing moved the silence Of
he vaults was unbroken, save by the distant
ootsteps of our party, who were by this time {
ONE distance before me- was safe. The iron ,
and of Death held down the vast multitude around t
ne How mighty is his power '
The great mass of bones in these cataconbs S
we're brought from the cemeteries within the C
walls of Paris, before the first revolution. 1t has
ever been place of private interment. The c
emains of those who were murdered on the r
honorable tenth of August, and in one or two $
Their of the more dreadful massacres of the rev. g
luton, deposited here; their bones are not b
xposed to view A separate vault closely wal t
I'd up, contains the remains of the victims of each +
f these massacres A brief inscripscription rec ?
rds the time AM manner of their death. t
The spirit of collecting seems to have invaded d
ven these dismal caverns. In the arrangement y
the bones, a selection was made of such as !
Inhibited neculiar formation and thew have been 0