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I make no claims to being a historian, unlike my maternal grandfather, Ralph Volney Harlow, who was Chairman of the History department at Syracuse University for quite some years and the author of several volumes of American History, such as The United States : From Wilderness to World Power. As I'm not a historian by profession, I shall remain brief here, and let the photographs speak for themselves. The history can be found in any number of good books.
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But before we get to the photos, let me ask you a question. Do you know where General Lafayette is buried ? Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, who provided considerable aid to the cause of the American Revolution ?
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Some of you erudite readers may know, but I can honestly admit that I did not know where this august person was buried until two weeks ago, when on an excursion into Paris to meet Virginia of Paris Through My Lens, her friend Mary suggested I try to visit La Fayette's burial place. As I had no idea where it was, she explained to me that he is buried in the Picpus Cemetery, a tiny graveyard very close to la Place de la Nation on the east side of Paris. The entrance is a barely marked door in a wall on the rue Picpus.
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The reason, I learned by reading the plaques on the cemetery wall, that La Fayette is buried there, is that his wife, Madame de Noailles, wanted to be buried there alongside her grandmother, her mother, and her sister, who were all guillotined in 1794 at la Place de la Nation. Not far from La Fayette's grave is a mass grave for approximately 1300 other people who also lost their heads in June and July 1794 during la Terreur.
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For some reason this sad soot-stained and damaged cupid or cherub spoke to me from his place on a wall there. "The horror, the horror", he whispered.
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Near the entrance to the site there is a chapel, on the interior walls of which are carved the names of the 1300 guillotine victims who are buried there.
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In the gardens between the chapel and the graveyard proper, this doorway to nowhere stands, a ghost from the past. I walked through it to see if it might transport me to another time and place, but it did not . . .
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La Fayette's tomb, he died in May, 1834, long after the Terror was over . . .
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A father and son who died for their country . . .
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The crest on a mausoleum belonging to the Montmorency family . . .
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A faceless queen gazing back into the depths of the past . . .
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A princess who died young . . .
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And finally, an ancient king, gazing out across the universe, into an imponderable future. . .
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