The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-08-24
THEREAnCYRANo DE BERGERAo
Searching for the Remains of That
 Noted Author and Swordsman.

for the Remains of That
 Noted Author and Swordsman. (From Paris Letter in New York Sum-
 The committee of old Paris. an as- sociation formed to preserve historic buildings or keep the records of them where preservation Is too late, has taken in hand the task of finding the remains of Cyrano de Bergerac and of giving them 0 last resting place worthy of the distinguished writer and swordsman. Cyranos burial place is unknown His aunt, Catherine de Cy- rano, was the prioress or the domin- ican community of the Daughters of the Cross, whose convent was situated in rue de Charonne. She converted .Cyrano in his later days, and according to Dulaure, the historian of Paris, she had his body buried in the church of the convent.
 Unfortunately however, owing to the recent laws affecting religious bod ies in France, the convent building has been sold, the church has been demol- ished, as well as the oratory, formerly in the nuns garden, which may have been the site of Cyrano's tomb, if 1t was not in the church itself, and the whole is now for sale as building lots.
 Lucien Lambeau, the secretary of the committee, however still hopes for success, as the work of demolition has been limited to what is above the ground We hope" he says to dis cover the tomb when excavations are being made for new foundations, al- though it must be said that Paris ground gives up but few of it's dead, its soil has suffered so many upheav- als. In churches vaults have been de- Istroyed to put in heating apparatus, as in the church of St Koch, where we have failed to find the remains of Cor nellie. Two other instances where the lcommittee has met with failure are the search for the remains of Adrienne | lLecouvreur, buried at night, because she was an actress, in some waste land lnear the Quai d'Orsay. and for the re- mains of Louis XVII in the cemetery of st. Marguerite.
 "The revolution, too, was the cause of much confusion, because lead cof- fins were at that time dug tip to be made into bullets. We were more for tunate in the case of Admiral Paul Jones, whom we found in the old Protestant cemetery in the rue Grange laux Belles. We were hopeful in our new search because Cooheris, histor- ian who lived about 1860, states that he had seen Cyrano's epitaph in the convent church"
 It is only right that Paris should take an interest in the big-nosed hero of Rostand's play, for also he is gen. erally looked upon as a typical Gascon he was born in Paris in 1919 and the tBergerac of his name has no connec- ton with the Dordogne town noted for its wines, but belongs to lief near Chevreuse, few miles from Paris,
 At nineteen he entered the company of the guards and quickly gained a reputation as a fighter, receiving the nickname of the Demon de la bra voure." Owing to sword wound in the throat he left the army about 1641, but he did not give up his sword. His duels were innumerable, and the story lis told that once he alone put to flight I100 men who had been hired to at tack him near the Nesles gate.
 His death was far more prosaic than that of the hero of Rostands play. As literature, to which he de- voted himself on leaving the army seldom in those days supported its supporters, Cyrano became secretary to the duke of Arpajou, One evening as he entered the duke's palace he re- ceived on his head a huge piece of
 wood thrown from an upper window by accident or design. He did not die at once and while he fingered his aunt us F6pOEL6Q lU HdAS NOAANVl lGQ His previous convictions may perhaps
 be gathered from two lines, "An houi after death our vanished soul will be
 what 1t was an hour before life" He
 was thirty-six years old when he died
 A writer who lived at the same time
 as Cyrano has left us this description
 of him.
 "I1e was by nature neither a Lap.
 lander nor giant. His head appeared almost shorn of hairs; their number
 could have been counted ten pace. away His eyes were lost under his
 eyebrows; his nose, wide in trunk anC curved, resembled that of the yellow and green chatterers which art brought from America. His legs, d variance with his body, were like spin
 dles. His stomach was copy O Aesop's paunoh,
 l