In Paris, Dead Men Tell Tales

Alongside the stone wall, mourners at the funeral of an African friend clapped their hands and tapped their feet as a three-piece combo played “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Elsewhere, a strolling couple paused to kiss, sheltered from the cold, gray mist by ancient trees.

Farther along, dozens of cats, meowing in chorus, sprang from mysterious recesses toward the bent wisp of a woman, unsteadily but methodically opening cans of cat food on a flat tombstone.

As the day progressed it was obvious why Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise is one of the most visited sites in Paris.

For the French, a visit to a cemetery is an important social occasion. Although no one can mistake Pere Lachaise’s 114 acres for a park, many visitors, after walking down its steep steps, pause to talk on a bench, harvest snails from the tombs or picnic within its walls.

And if they happen to sip their wine near the grave of Alfred de Musset, they might borrow his words for a toast: “My glass is not large, but I drink from my glass.”

Some visitors to Pere Lachaise come to view the memorials to concentration camp victims and to honor France’s famous, belying the words of Moliere, buried in Pere Lachaise, who observed: “A dead man is only a dead man and is of no importance.”

The attitude of visitors is best characterized by the remarks of a woman who spoke to me as we stood at the grave of the country’s beloved chanteuse, Edith Piaf.

When I did not understand her French, she said in heavily accented English, “It does not matter. What is important is that you are here.”

Her words echoed the sentiment of another permanent tenant of Pere Lachaise: Pierre Augustin de Beaumarchais, creator of Figaro. “Where love is concerned, too much is not even enough.”

The oldest of Paris’ four major cemeteries, Pere Lachaise opened in 1804 and is named after the Jesuit confessor of Louis XIV. Its 97 divisions are created by tree-lined roads with names like Chemin du Dragon and Rue du Repos.

Gardeners seasonally vary the bright patchwork colors, while dirt paths guide explorers along graves so tightly jammed together that only the cats can make their way irreverently between and across them.

If you choose to wander on your own, walking on the cobblestone walkways through Pere Lachaise is easier with a map bought from the gatekeeper. It is a must if you are looking for the graves of the many famous buried here, including authors Colette, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and performers Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora Duncan.

Monuments in Pere Lachaise run the gamut from elaborate, life-size statuary by some of France’s finest sculptors, such as David d’Angers, now buried here, to a broken chambered nautilus shell embeded in an irregular boulder.

Birch logs strewn across a granite tomb contrast with a live bonsai, clearly well-tended, atop a polished neighbor.

Ferdinand de Lesseps, promoter of the Suez Canal, lies beneath a pyramid, but along the Avenue des Acadias a simple stele marks the grave of Napoleon’s Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion, master of the Rosetta stone.

A tall white marble obelisk over the grave of physicist Edouard Branly proclaims him the discoverer of radio conduction. Other monuments convey a lifetime of honors or achievement with incised colored duplicates of their occupants’ medals and awards.

The faithful add their touches to the graves of the famous. Masses of bouquets for Piaf and actress Simone Signoret, graffiti for the grave of Jim Morrison, a single bunch of violets on Proust’s resting place.

Illicit lovers leave their letters tucked in the crevices around the grave of a famous composer identified simply as Fred Chopin.

The remains of Oscar Wilde, successful in his bid to “live in the memory of the commercial classes by not paying one’s bills,” lie beneath a huge Assyrian figure donated, of course, by a female admirer.

But the graves of the famous are not always the most elaborate or symbolic. Life-size weeping and prostrate figures, eternally inconsolable, convey the anguish of the bereaved.

Soaring angels and stoic pelicans, an early Christian symbol, express their faith, while other monuments display private symbols or jokes. Lion tamer Jean Pezon sits astride his lion Brutus, who ate him.

Honore de Balzac, whose grave is in Pere Lachaise, once said: “Friendship and glory are the only inhabitants of the tombs!”

-- -- --

The main entrance to Pere Lachaise is from the Boulevard de Menilmontant in the 20th arrondissement , Pere Lachaise Metro stop. To enter at the top (back) and work your way down to the principal entrance, exit at the Gambretta Metro stop and enter on Rue de Rondeaux.

Pere Lachaise is open from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., mid-March to mid-November; 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. the rest of the year. Sundays and holidays it opens at 9 a.m. (mid-November through Jan. 16), 8:30 a.m. the rest of the year.

The Michelin guide to Paris contains a simplified map of Pere Lachaise. Four guided explorations are offered in “Permanent Parisians,” by Judi Culbertson and Tom Randall.