Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/275

 250 MONUMENTS.

are plants, and flowering shrubs, and seats for mourn ing friends, when they visit the departed.

The monument to Abelard and Heloise, is of Gothic A architecture, and constructed from the ruins of the f abbey of the Paraclete. Its form is a parallelogram, fourteen feet by eleven, and twenty-four in height. A pinnacle, twelve feet in elevation, rises from the cen tre of the roof, and four smaller ones, finely sculptured, ornament the corners. It has fourteen columns, six feet in height, with rich capitals, and the arches which they support are surmounted by cornices wrought with flowers. The four pediments are decorated with bas- reliefs, roses, and medallions. The statues of Heloise and Abelard are recumbent within, and literally heaped with garlands. Their bones repose in the vault beneath ; those of Abelard having been removed from the priory of St. Marcel, where he died in 1142, and those of Heloise, who survived him about twenty years, from the Paraclete, of which she was abbess.

The tomb of the unfortunate Madame Blanchard, who fell a victim to her aeronautic ardor, is surmounted by a globe in flames. The inventor of gas-lights is also honored by a gilded flame issuing from an urn. On the monument of the benevolent Abbe Sicard, rise six beautifully sculptured marble hands, each forming, with its fingers, one of the letters of his name, accord ing to the manual alphabet of the deaf and dumb, his indebted and affectionate pupils. On the tomb of Gretry, the musical composer, hangs a lyre, and on that of La Fontaine sits very composedly a black fox,

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