Bismarck daily tribune., 1908-12-09
A FAMOUS GENE Terry
Pere Lachaise Is One of the
Landmarks of Paris.
1T HAS A STORMY HISTORY.

/ 1T HAS A STORMY HISTORY.
This Picturesque Burial Place Has
Served as battle-ground as well as
Graveyard--its Monuments, Lovers
and Disconsolate Widows.
Pere Lachaise is the largest ana
quite the most interesting Of the Paris
cemeteries and named after the Jesuit
confessor Of Louis XIV, whose coun-
try seat occupied the site of the present
chapel until the ground was made 4
cemetery in 1904. 1t covers 40 acres
of ground, is picturesque, but quite I'M
lovely. Hare wrote about the tombs
that weight was their chief peculiar
ity and that all the monuments looked
as II each family had tried to pile as
much marble as possible on to their
deceased relatives"
Pere Lachaise has a stormy history.
In 1914 the Russians fought the French
there and gave them beating. Dur
ing the commune the Versaillais and
Communards fought several pitched
battles among the tombstones and did
considerable damage But it is not
SO much with the history Of the ceme-
terry as with the people buried in it
that we have to deal. A volume might
be filed with the mere list of all the
celebrated men and women buried I'm
it, for, as Victor Hugo wrote, being
buried in Pere Lachaise is like having
mahogany furniture-a sign of ele-
gance."
In Pere Lachaise the monument
which attracts most visitors is that OF
.Abelard and Heloise, the two most ia
nous lovers in the world. The monu-
ment was first erected 637 years after
their death and brought to Pere La
chaise in 1917 from the museum where
it had been during the revolution. An
other famous lover, Alfred de Musset,
lies buried not far from the two Will
lows over the graves of Heloise and
Abelard. David, the painter; Rachel,
the actress; Balzac, Scribe, MicheIet
and many other well known folk lie
near at hand. Admiral Sir Sydney
Smith, Lord Seymour and other well
known Englishmen are to be found In
other portions of the cemetery, while
literature is represented not only by
great authors, but by Lesurques, the
victim of Dubosc in the famous legal
Lyons Mail imbroglio., !.
But Pere Lachaise has more romance
than in its tombstones. Chatting one
day with one Of the old soldiers who
are the keepers of this grim park, ]
learned some curious facts about it.
I'VE never have duh moment" the
man said. 'You may think that our
time here Is monotonous, but you are
quite wrong If you do so. To begin
with, there are the burglars. The
cemetery is overr1n with them. There
are three kinds of burglars. There
are the connoisseurs who often get
away with valuable prizes, for you
will be surprised at the works of art
of small size which people put in their
chapels. The window Is broken,
stick slipped through the hole, and all
sorts of things worth having are fished
out; then the bronze stealers, who
take away as much as they can carry
in their special pockets and make from
Is to 20 francs day at the game until
we catch them.
"a little while ago bust weighing
forty pounds was taken out Of the
cemetery over one of the walls. But
ha oA {e
perhaps, that Of the pearl wreaths
Women are the principal offenders
They select the new ones, which are
not weather stained, fiatten them with
their backs against the tombstone,
slip them under their dresses, and
when they have got away with them
1--WE have no right to search even sus-
picious looking customers) sell them
to dealers, to whom they tell the well
worn story of poor workwoman who
has need Of food.
You would hardly believe it, but
Pere Lachaise," said the keeper, sis a
favorite meeting place for lovers. We
get lovers of all ages, and perhaps
more schoolboys and schoolgirls than
anything else. But the three most
curious things we see here in the ceme-
terry are the forlorn widows, the letter
boxes and the cafe" '"The cafe?" I
asked. "Yes. There are hundreds Of
people in Paris who refuse to believe
that their dead do not enjoy after
death the good things they used to like
when they were alive. Mothers bring
apples and sweets and leave them on
the tombstones of their children. Peo-
pie bring wine and glasses, and there
is one old gentleman who leaves a
potato salad on his sons tombstone
regularly every Sunday. OF course
the children soon find out these things,
and we have never been able to con-
vince the people who bring them of
the absurdity of doing SO. 1t is a very
harmless superstition, after all"
"And the letter boXesT' I asked.
Lovers letter boxes?" said the guard
ian. There are dozens Of them In
all parts of Pere Lachaise. Sometimes
they are holes in the trunks Of trees;
sometimes they are little hollows un-
der stones.
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