does not seem to
furnish any grounds for these slight suspicions.... The soil is not
exhausted, but it is less fit to bring about the dissolution of the dead
bodies."

Various remedies were proposed in the conclusion of the report: "Prevent
the lodgers in the neighboring houses from throwing their water, urine,
and filth into the cemetery, and, to this end, increase the number of
_lunettes_ in the closets and close the windows up with gratings." This
particularly concerned the row of houses along the Rue de la
Ferronnerie, which formed one of the long sides of the cemetery; they
were five stories in height, and had been reconstructed under Louis XIV,
eighty years before. A typical detail of the period may be found in the
fact that there were "lunettes" only on the first floor; the dwellers in
the upper stories found it more convenient to throw their refuse out of
the windows than to carry it down-stairs. In fact,--says MM.
Firmin-Didot's editor, from whom we gather these details,--had the
private individuals any right to complain when, in building the palace
of Versailles, only one thing had been forgotten,--the closets? "And yet
these were the good old times, and Monsieur _Purgon_ [of Moliere's
_Malade Imaginaire_] was then held in great honor!"

The commission also made several recommendations concerning the
cemetery, which to-day would be thought to be very insufficient. It was
proposed to level the ground, to divide it into squares, to dig graves
in a diagonal direction opposite to the one formerly followed, to oblige
the grave-digger to take out the bones each time, to have only one
common grave open all the time--instead of three, to double the size of
the graves, to cover the bodies with eight inches or a foot of
earth--according to the season, to open the graves by preference only in
the winter, to burn the bones or transport them to the new grounds of
the Porcherons, acquired by the chapter of Saint-Germain, and to
exchange part of the soil taken from the graves for new soil from this
locality. Another report, made by the commissioner Laumonier in 1780,
advised the establishment of a provisional cemetery under the charge of
the Capuchins,--"it were better," said the commissioner, "to have monks
for a guardian rather than a drunkard, like that of the Innocents."

This was Maitre Poutrain, who had been _fossoyeur_ here for thirty
years, and who made application to be transferred to the new cemetery as
soon as