IN THE CEMETERY. 
295 
But he may be mistaken in his words,—that he may have ill-applied 
the names,—this is not impossible; but so far as the facts are concerned, 
it is an entirely different matter: whatever he describes, I firmly be¬ 
lieve he saw. 
An accident threw me into the way of understanding the poet’s 
intention. On a certain memorable day, my wife and I repaired to 
the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, to visit before winter the burial-places 
of my family, the tomb which reunites my father and his grandson. 
This latter had been born to me in the very year which terminated the 
first half of the present century, and I had named him Lazarus in my 
devout hope of the Awakening of the Nations. I had imagined that 
I saw upon his countenance a gleam, as it were, of the strong and 
tender thoughts which throbbed in my heart at that last moment of 
my teaching. Oh, vanity of human hopes ! This flower of my autumn, 
which I yearned to animate with the potent vitality that had been of 
too tardy development in myself, disappeared almost in the act of birth. 
And there was no help but to deposit my child at the feet of my father, 
who had already been four years dead. Two cypresses which I then 
planted in that ill-omened nook of clay have acquired in the brief in¬ 
terval an extraordinary growth. Two, nay, three times taller than my¬ 
self, they clothe their vigorous branches with a young, rich foliage which 
ever points towards heaven. If, with an effort, you lower them, they 
rear themselves again, in all their pride and strength, flourishing with 
a marvellous pith, as if they had drank from the earth where I planted 
them the precious treasure of my past and my unconquerable aspiration. 
While revolving these thoughts I ascended the hill, and before 
arriving at the tomb, which is situated in the upper alle}q I made this 
observation,—that though I had on so many occasions frequented this 
melancholy and beautiful spot, having been in earlier life the most 
assiduous visitor of the dead, I had scarcely ever seen any insects in 
the Pere-Lachaise. Hardly even at the great epoch of the flowers, 
when everything is covered with bloom, and numbers of the old de¬ 
serted sepulchres are embowered in roses, I had not remarked that 
animal life abounded there as it abounds elsewhere. Very few birds, 
and very few insects. Why ? I could not say. 
