THE CASKET. THE MOURNER OF THE BURIAL PLACE OF PERE LA CHAISE. THE moment I entered this tranquil, and beautiful, and sacred spot, the busy hum of the gay city was behind me, the world was, as it were, "shut out," and a pensive but happy feeling came over me as I wandered through its paths, or strayed every now and then into its recesses,-to read the epitaphs by which the living sought to perpetuate the memory of the dead, to inhale the odours of the fresh flowers, and to admire the care and taste with which the little mounds were cultivated. But what particularly engaged my attention, and most delighted me, was the simple, yet elegant manner in which the silent inhabitants of the garden were recorded by their surviving relatives and B friends. I paused beside one tomb of pure white marble; it contained the brief inscription-"0 mon Eugenee!"-Nothing more was written there : nor was anything more necessary to speak the deep sorrow of some bereaved mother for a dear daughter, or some lone husband for a beloved wife. On another was engraven this sentence-" Adèle, si jeune." It was impossible to pass it without reflexion.-"So young."-Good she might have been, beautiful perhaps-but young she was-and in her youth she was taken. I stood over a comparatively humble slab; it told, in few words, the story of one who lay beneath, and spoke impressively of "La beauté qui causa ses fautes et ses regrets." While I reflected on the fate of this hapless creature, and pictured to my mind one whose sorrows and whose sufferings were at an end, a young female passed rather hastily by me. Her garb was almost English, sufficiently so to shew me, at a rapid glance, that she was not a native, but a sojourner in the land. She carried on her arm a small basket of flowers, and as she looked towards me, and dropped a curtesy, I guessed by her melancholy countenance, that she was a mourner going to decorate some recently-made grave. I was at a distant part of the garden, gazing on the tomb of Labedoyere, when I heard from a cluster of trees to the right, a voice singing, lowly and indistinctly, the following lines : No tablet marks my father's grave, Their branches o'er his humble bed ; Perchance the spirit lingers near The grave in which the body lies; Oh! guide her through each path of ill, Thou art her guardian angel still. I approached the young woman, whose voice I heard so sweetly rising above those of the other, but less pensive, warblers of the garden, and found it was the individual who had passed me a few minutes before, and whose appearance so much pleased and interested me. We had no difficulty in becoming acquainted with each other, for she at once perceived that I was an Englishman; and my country was in some degree her's, for, as she almost immediately informed me, her father, who lay beneath the mound which still retained the impress of her knees, was a native of that "noble and beloved island." Under the shadow of some neighbouring trees, we were soon seated; and while her father's grave was in her view, she was led to tell me some circumstances connected with his history. There are times when the most simple and common-place incidents acquire an importance, and create an interest, scarcely credible to those who are unable to enter into the feelings to which they owe their influence, and perhaps their being. The story of this young woman (although it varied little from those that are of everyday occurrence) made an impression on my mind, which will not be easily erased. "Her father," she said, "was a native of the West of England, but having been rather early in life involved in difficulties and dangers, with which she herself was, to a great degree, unacquainted, he had fled to France, and, under the assumed name of Pierre Brochard, he had married and settled in the country. She would not trouble me," she observed, "by detailing the various changes of good and evil fortune to which her father had been destined; she |