nd the old Hotel-Dieu, were all supplied from the quarries of the
Faubourgs Saint-Jacques and Saint-Michel. As the capital increased,
these excavations were carried farther; those nearer the centre of the
city were gradually filled up after being exhausted of their building
material. By 1774, they had become the refuge of numerous thieves and
vagabonds, and in consequence of the many accidents caused by the
sinking of the earth over them, in the quartiers Saint-Jacques, of the
Observatoire, and of Montrouge, in 1774, 1777, and 1778, an official
inspection was ordered by the government, and a corps of engineers was
directed to carry out all the necessary measures. The credit of the idea
of using the quarries of Montsouris and of Montrouge as a receptacle for
the bones from the ancient cemetery of the Innocents is ascribed to M.
Lenoir, lieutenant general de police, as early as 1780; but it was not
till November, 1785, that M. Guillaumot, inspecteur general of the
quarries, received definite orders to prepare a suitable place for these
relics of mortality.

[Illustration: ANCIENT CEMETERY DES INNOCENTS, IN THE RUE AUX FERS,
1780, SHOWING THE CHARNIERS FULL OF SKULLS. After a design by Bernier.

The accumulation of human remains, during eight or nine centuries, in
this place had become so great and evil that, in 1786, they were all
transferred to the Catacombs, and a market was erected on this spot.]

This officer selected the quarries under the plain of Montsouris in the
locality known as the Tombe-Issoire--it was said from a famous brigand
of the time of Louis VII, who ravaged this neighborhood, because of
their extent and their proximity to the city. It was proposed to deposit
in this ossuary not only the bones from the Innocents, but from all the
other cemeteries, charniers, and sepulchral chapels of Paris. On the 7th
of April, 1786, the quarries were formally blessed by the clergy and
consecrated to their new use, and on the same day the transportation of
the bones from the Innocents was begun. It was carried on constantly, at
the close of each day, in funerary cars covered with a pall and followed
by surpliced priests, chanting the service for the dead. This operation,
interrupted only during the heat of summer, was completed in less than
fifteen months; and the catacombs--so called from this date--have since
received a vast number of bones from other cemeteries and churches, and
also of the victims of the many stre