The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-03-04
A Visit to the Catacombs Of Paris.

ians make even their bones pay. mean
their own bones. When they are through
with them, and they have gone through
the formality of few years. burial, they
are dug up, put in the catacombs and
made show of to visitors. The show
is free, but q visit keeps thousands Of
strangers day longer in Paris, and this
is where the profit comes in and is wrung
out by these clever people. So the
bones of the grand and great-grand-
parents of the present generation OF
Frenchmen, as they lie there in great
heaps under ground, with the rats scut-
ling through them, are still useful. I
went down among these thousands and
thousands of dead men and women in
company with some 800 living men and
women of all tongues and countries. 1t
was on Thursday visiting day. The
other ''visiting day" is Saturday. The
entrance to these tombs is at the Boule-
ward d'Enfer, or Boulevard of Hell, If
you want the English of it. Prepare
tory to the descent into the tombs each
one of the awaiting three hundred
bought candle. The end of each can
die was let into square bit of paste
board which protected ones dress from
the drippings. There were 200 candles
too many, for one light to every three
visitors is sufficient. But we did not
know this, and the French were not GO
ing to tell US and spoil the sale of 200
candles. Having bought the candles
we, the 800, were in bare yard partly
inclosed by high board fences. We
waited at least two hours. Then we
went down ninety-two steep stone steps
and traversed a long passage-way un-
derground without meeting any bones.
Thus we tramped long time in single
file without seeing bone. On the rocky
ceiling was a continuous black mark.
This, followed, would lead to either en-
trance and so afford any laggard sure
guidance. Underneath, the mud in
places was greasy in consistency, tarry
in tenacity and whitish in color. It was
the gypsum mud Astounding in Paris. It
jumped on our shoes and gradually over
spread our garments, which broke out
in irregular white patches.
At last the long-wished-for piles of
disjointed skeletons came into view.
They were ssfaced up" with skulls and
the larger bones in front, as regularly as
q pile of bricks. But behind all was
osseous confusion. Rib bones and
skulls, tibias and fbulas, backbone
joints and breast bones, bits of skulls
with moldy hair attached, leg bones
and arm bones, al piled together by
the ton, by the million, al of the dull,
rusty color which bones assume in damp
places. Here were skulls once covered
by the bonnet rouge. Here were flesh.
lass jaws which had howled ct Louis
XVI. and roared the first Marseillaise;
rib of aristocrat; leg Of eGnasge, arm of
beauty, foot of fishwoman, and all the
interstices filed with the little feet and
finger bones of the thousands Ct past
and forgotten Jeans and Jacques, jean
nettes, Josephinos, Paulines, Blanches
and Louises, who lived and suffered
and enjoyed and died generations ago
all flung here, . horrible kaleidoscope
mass Of disiointed skeletons - ike
tho rusty wheels and springs of ten
thousand old clocks piled in heap.
These heaps were dated 1892, 1906 and
1914 and upward. The inscriptions
over the various piles were in some
eases from Scripture, in others from
Rousseau and other writer's. The older
the sepulture the more frequent and
voluminous the epitaphs. For the pres
emit they seemed content without . kae.
Perhaps they deem that bones now carry
their own sermon. A man ahead of ne
busted himself with pulling out tie
teeth Of every skull he could reach. He