OUR PARIS LETTER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 461, 21 December 1880, Page 3

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(FROM Otfß OWN COTtRESFONDENT.)

Pams, Nov. 4. France has various forms of religion, and even of no religion, but there is one •where no heresy exists—the culte of the -dead. Devotee or Materialist alike experience'an inward pleasure in visiting the graves of relatives and friends, and next that of celebrities, following , that the visitor sympathises with their character. France has two strictly official " Decoration Days " —the first of the New Year and the first of November, the latter toeing the more important. To visit the -cemeteries is then a kind of necrological •renew, and to note what tombs are ■covered with flowers or friendship s offerings, is a fair test of how the tenants •continue to remain popular as they fade into history. No one thinks of going to the grave-yards unless dressed in suitable black the very poor manage to have some kind of mortuary favor in the •way of toilette then a bouquet, a crown or a plaster image is a tribute every grave exacts. For those—the poorer •classes understood—whose relatives are Juried in other parts of France, or elsewhere, it is customary to deposit a wreath at the foot of the public cross in the cemetery and, kneeling, ofler up a prayer. The guardians of the bivouacs of the dead are paid on the day of the A Jete ties Marts for their year's services in keeping the graves in -a well-trimmed condition ; but this happiness does not produce a shadow of happiness on features habituated to solemnity. Pere Lachaise Cemetery registered 160,000 visitors; among the tombs of the illustrious dead that received numerous pilgrims was that of Thiers ; perliaps next that of the aeronauts Spinelli .and Sivel; and next, Beranger and his friend Manuel, who, though a deputy, was expelled by force from the Chamber for disobedience. An old printer, aged 78, performs the voluntary duty of: watching over Beranger's monument; he printed the first and the last of the poet's verses. ! There was a marked increase in the'number of bouquets on the tomb of Abeilard and Heloise ; Danton's resting place was remembered, and de Musset's Jess forgotten; Bernard de Saint Pierre's sepulchre had several tiny bouquets, •doubtless from young admirers of his ■" Paul and Virginia "; Aimee Desclee s has numerous friends, and that her talent of actress merited, but Dejazet's grave was deserie I ; Ledru Rollin's monument ■was favorably patronised, indeed, as a rule, politicians appear to be more popu>lai than any other class of celebrities ; aio pious hand remembered poor Grisi: formerly Mario sent wreaths from Italy to bedeck her grave. Moiitmartue is the next important in-tra-mural cemetery. Cavnignac's tomb was as usual covered with flowers ; the Italians did not forget Daniel Maniu, «nd Parisians readied Henri Heine, that German so intensely French ; Offenfoach's tomb was too recently closed to test souvenirs ; 'the wreaths placed on Jiis bier are hardly yut failed on his

• grave. At Montparnasse the well-trodden •grave of the four sergeants of Uochclli 1 prominently decorated ; and, next, that of Edgar Duinet. A very marked •demonstration took place over the resting place of Louis Asseline : he was the •chief of the Freethinkers, and his followers mustered to deliver orations ; he also founded a society devoted to mutual autopsy, and was the first to submit to ** ci post mortem examination in presence ■of all the members. The Rndicile continue to declaim f * against Gambetta. They insist upon his becoming Primp Minister, assuring him in advance that they ,will oppose his policy tooth and nail—which is to ■carry reforms by degrees, and accustom the prejudices and feelings of the minority to inevitable changes rather than accomplishing the transformation by a touch of Prospero's wand. Gambetta pays no heed to these attacks, and occasionally passes a quiet evening with his electoral committee at Belleville. At any a moment he could scatter his

enemies to the winds by n Marc Antony "*• $ oration. Kochefort and Blanqui have gone off to Milan to join Garibaldi in the anniversary ot the battle of Mentana « where the chassepots first made marvels ; they will invite the old General to come to Paris, and have secured the easiest of sleeping cars to transport him. Felix Pyat is improving the few hours , liberty he possesses, before entering his prison for two years; he celebrated the anniversary of the 31st of October, 1870, when in full siege the Communists forgot the Prussians, to imprison the Government in the Hotel de Ville. The t»\ as all others, the hall was rr> <&corated with red flags, the chains vrorn afc New Caledonia were suspended here and there coyered with laurel leaves, "* only red wine was drunk at dinner, and one orator broached' the original doctrinethat the man who dies fighting for a ■cause is not the hero, but he who escapes A alive, that can skedaddle in fact. Hudiforas observed, that he who fights and runs away will live to fight another day. The pupils of the Polytechnic, or engineer's school, have had a little I rebellion. The new inspector of studies ■ff introduced a system of examination, that the pupils declared to be impracticable and unfair; they delegated one of theirs, to wait on the director and respectfully invite him to reconsider his innovations. This delegate is called a Major, and has the right to approach the throne —like ambassadors. He was not received, so the pupils barricaded themselves in a hall, but this becoming ,m- soon a Black hole of Calcutta, they ■ t ' retired to a court-yard, awaiting the ' - military to dislodge tl:em. The * tw Director will likely be changed.