Page 935 - les-miserables

[16] Instead of porte cochere and porte batarde.
This cemetery, with its peculiarities outside the regula-
tions, embarrassed the symmetry of the administration.
It was suppressed a little later than 1830. The cemetery of
Mont-Parnasse, called the Eastern cemetery, succeeded to
it, and inherited that famous dram-shop next to the Vaugi-
rard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted
on a board, and which formed an angle, one side on the
drinkers’ tables, and the other on the tombs, with this sign:
Au Bon Coing.
The Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded
cemetery. It was falling into disuse. Dampness was invad-
ing it, the flowers were deserting it. The bourgeois did not
care much about being buried in the Vaugirard; it hinted at
poverty. Pere-Lachaise if you please! to be buried in Pere-
Lachaise is equivalent to having furniture of mahogany.
It is recognized as elegant. The Vaugirard cemetery was a
venerable enclosure, planted like an old-fashioned French
garden. Straight alleys, box, thuya-trees, holly, ancient
tombs beneath aged cypress-trees, and very tall grass. In
the evening it was tragic there. There were very lugubrious
lines about it.
The sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white
pall and the black cross entered the avenue of the Vaugirard
cemetery. The lame man who followed it was no other than
Fauchelevent.
The interment of Mother Crucifixion in the vault un-
der the altar, the exit of Cosette, the introduction of Jean
Valjean to the dead-room,— all had been executed without

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