slept side by side, and they said, "It is here." And so the dust of
infidel greatness seemed to interfere with the rites. A change was made.
Let Victor Hugo tell:
"One night in May, Eighteen Hundred Fourteen, about two o'clock in the
morning, a cab stopped near the city gate of La Gare at an opening in a
board fence. This fence surrounded a large, vacant piece of ground
belonging to the city of Paris. The cab had come from the Pantheon, and
the coachman had been ordered to take the most deserted streets. Three
men alighted from the cab and crawled into the enclosure. Two carried a
sack between them. Other men, some in cassocks, awaited them. They
proceeded towards a hole dug in the middle of the field. At the bottom of
the hole was quicklime. These men said nothing, they had no lanterns. The
wan daybreak gave a ghastly light; the sack was opened. It was full of
bones. These were the bones of Jean Jacques and of Voltaire, which had
been withdrawn from the Pantheon.
"The mouth of the sack was brought close to the hole, and the bones
rattled down into that black pit. The two skulls struck against each
other; a spark, not likely to be seen by those standing near, was
doubtless exchanged between the head that made 'The Philosophical
Dictionary' and the head that made 'The Social Contract,' When that was
done, when the sack was shaken, when Voltaire and Rousseau had been
emptied into that hole, a digger seized a spade, threw into the opening
the heap of earth, and filled up the grave. The others stamped with their
feet upon the ground, so as to remove from it the appearance of having
been freshly disturbed. One of the assistants took for his trouble the
sack--as the hangman takes the clothing of his victim--they left the
enclosure, got into the cab without saying a word, and, hastily, before
the sun had risen, these men got away."
The ashes of the man who wrote these vivid words now rest next to the
empty tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau. But a step away is the grave of
Sadi-Carnot.
When the visitor is conducted to the crypt of the Pantheon, he is first
taken to the tomb of Victor Hugo. The sarcophagus on each side is draped
with the red, white and blue of France and the stars and stripes of
America. With uncovered heads, we behold the mass of flowers and wreaths,
and our minds go back to Eighteen Hundred Eighty-five, when the body of
the chief citizen of Paris lay in state at the Pantheon and five hundred
thousand peo
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