omewhat less
exorbitant amount.

Parisian funerals are conducted by a company--which, like most of such
enterprises in France, is a gigantic monopoly--under the direct
supervision of the government. The tariff of its charges includes nine
grades of funerals, at prices ranging from fifteen hundred dollars down
to four dollars. For the first amount the mourners enjoy all the
splendors possible to the occasion--a hearse draped with velvet and
drawn by four horses, each decked with ostrich-plumes and led by a groom
clothed in a mourning livery; velvet draperies sprinkled with silver
tears for the porte-cochere wherein the coffin lies in state; and grand
funeral lamps lit with spirits to flame around the bier at the church.
For the last tariff a pine coffin painted black, a stretcher and two men
to bear the body to the _fosse commune_, are accorded. But between these
two extremes lies every variety of funeral that one can imagine, a very
respectable affair with two mourning carriages being offered for about
sixty dollars. Very few Americans are ever interred in a Paris cemetery,
the prejudices of our nation exacting that the remains of the dead
should be transferred to their native land. To the foreigner this
process appears to be inexplicable, for, as a French gentleman once
remarked to me with a shrug of his shoulders, "Only the Americans and
English are fond of making corpses travel" (_de faire voyager leurs
morts_). They generally prefer to call in the services of the embalmer,
who for a charge of six hundred dollars will do his work wisely if not
too well. Still, there are some graves of our fellow-citizens still
visible even at Pere la Chaise. And at that historic cemetery for years
there existed a beautiful spot, a sort of hollow on the hillside, where
flowers, trees and grass all flourished luxuriantly, thanks to years of
neglect. It was a wild and lovely oasis of Nature in the midst of the
stiff, artificial formality of the rest of the cemetery, and became one
of the sights of the place. Unfortunately, French formality revolted
against the untamed charm of this neglected spot: the proprietor, an
American gentleman, was sought out, the lot was repurchased by the city,
the trees were uprooted, the hollow filled in, and the beautiful ravine
exists no longer.

The Compagnie des Pompes Funebres is obliged to inter the poor
gratuitously; nor is this service light, as the number of free funerals
is considerably greater t