A GRUESOME FESTIVAL IN PARIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10461, 5 June 1897, Page 2 (Supplement)

A GRUESOME FESTIVAL IN PARIS.

Maxy sensational shows hare been organised of late years in Paris, but (ho ghostly contort which took place on Saturday morning, April 3, in the email hours beats the record (writes the Paris correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph). Wo hare had coffin cafes, inferno . taverns, and night houses tricked out in mockery of heaven itself, bat this is the first time that the Catacombs of Paris, commonly known as the Boneyard or the Boueries, have reechoed the funeral music of Beethoven and Chopin of the " Danee Macabre" of San Sae'ns. The concert, called "spiritual and profane," was organised by a band of the now esthetes, who are art student*, budding doctors, lawyers, musicians, and literary people. With these were some of their female friends, who wear their hair plastered down tile sides of their faces, like Botticelli's figures, and a Mademoiselle do Mfrode, dauseuse of the opera. The musicians were of the leading class, recruited from the orchestras of the opera and the concerts of Lamoureux and Coloune. Invitations were sent) out to the press and to other quarters; go that at midnight on Friday over one hundred people presented themselves with great secrecy at the pate of the Catacombs in the Rue Oareau. The conspirators, as the organisers of the charnel-house concert have been justly called, led the way, having admonished all the invited persons to make as little noise as possible when entering or leaving the street leading to the city .of the dead. ' All this mystery was necessary because the concert organisers had no official authorisation to enter the catacombs. They simply bribed two persons in charge of the place, one of whom was entrusted with too key of the dead men's door. This breach of trust will, of course, be punished by the roads and bridges officials, to whoso department the catacombs belong; but it is doubtful if the peccant employes will be dismissed as powerful influence will be Used to save thorn. They are already spoken of in a highly eulogistic manner, as they asalstod in organising an original, if horrible sensation for Paris and the world at large, the descent down the snail-like stairs of 94 Steps leading to the caverns of the dead was dimly illumined by common candles. The persons attending the .concert were then conducted along the central gallery Or main shaft past the myriads of death's heads and crossbonoj piled around. The whole place exhales an indescribable odour, for it is deep down in the bowels of the earth and contains the bones of over: three millions of past generations of Parisians, collected between 1780 and 1796 from - the Cemetery of the Innocents and from other long • vanished metropolitan, and extra-mural graveyards. In the oataaorabs were also placed the remains of many who were killed in Paris street-fights during times of civil war or revolution. The walls are inscribed here and there with the names of the old cemeteries and with Latin inscriptions from the Scriptures referring to death as the lot of all. None of these mementoes of mortality seemed ,to trouble the midnight Visitors to the catacombs. Some of them handled the skulls like Hamlet in the graveyard* and indulged in mock moralisings over the dreamless head*. A few cracked jokes on the ribs of death, and a medical professor volunteered a lecture on anatomy. Some of the Botticelli-tresied young Women became a little nervous, however, and complained that the place saddened them, but they were consoled by their partners, and all waited for the concert. This took place at a tort of crow-roads, around which some chairs were placed. The musician* stationed themselves before their stands ab half-past one o'clock in the morning and arranged their parts by the dim light of the candles stuck in skulls'. . When everything was ready the conductor tapped hie desk, raised his baton, and the plaintive meanings of Chopin's Funeral March wen heard, The violins wailed through the gloomy halls of death as if they were played by ghoit«, and not by robust men of flesh and blood under the lead of M. Furet. There were also heard that eerie composition the " Danse Macabre" of Saint Satins, Funeral March from Beethoven's Heroic Symphony, and a fragment from the " PerMß," the composer of which, M. Lerobx, conducted bis own work. Ma'riet recited a poem written by himself entitled "Aux Cataoombes," The xylophone was also used daring the concert in order to give an impression of the clanging or rasping of dead men's bones. The extraordinary entertainment, if it can be so called, concluded towards three in the morning, and the visitors to the subterranean vault* emerged into the fresh air above, some manifestly Impressed, fathers—and they were in the majority-affecting tobeunmoved by what they had seen and beard. Ib is'not likely that such an affair will be again allowed to take place in the datacombs, and ( (oine credit' ii given to the organisers of the strange concert for the manner in which they' carried their extradrdiaary enterprise to a successful issue considering the difficulties which usually beset intending explorer! of the subterranean ossuary, admission to which is not easily granted.' On the other hand not a lew protestation! have been heard against the desecration of the catacombs and the dbntpwb. paid by morbid sensation' mongers to the dead whose bones line the wall* of tie underground cavities which extend beneath the district* of Petit Moat tgu,»»nrJMoat««rU. .. <,;■;<>