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CHAPTER CV

THE CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LA-CHAISE

ONSIEUR BOVILLE had indeed met the funeral procession which conducted Valentine to her last home. The weather was dull and stormy, a wind, still warm but deadly, tore the yellow leaves from the half-stripped boughs of the trees, and scattered them among the crowd which filled the Boulevards. Villefort, a true Parisian, considered the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise alone worthy of receiving the mortal remains of a Parisian family; the others seemed to him mere country cemeteries, mere lodging-houses for corpses; at Père-la-Chaise alone a corpse of quality could have a home. He had therefore purchased a vault, which was quickly occupied by members of his family. On the front of the monument was inscribed

for such had been the last wish expressed by poor Renée, Valentine's mother. The pompous procession, therefore, wended its way toward Père-la-Chaise from the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Having crossed Paris, it passed through the Faubourg-du-Temple, then leaving the exterior Boulevards, it reached the cemetery. More than fifty private carriages followed the twenty mourning-coaches, and behind them more than five hundred persons joined the procession on foot.

These last consisted of all the young people whom Valentine's death had struck like a thunderbolt; and who, notwithstanding the coldness of the age and the prosaic spirit of the period, felt the poetic influence of the beautiful, chaste, and adorable girl, thus cut off in the flower of her youth.

As they left Paris, an equipage with four horses, at full speed, was seen to draw up suddenly: it contained Monte-Cristo. The count left