278, it represents a corpse in the
process of dissolution, "a much more striking figure than a skeleton;"
it is about a metre in height, stands upright, with a menacing
expression, in its right hand it holds the folds of a shroud or
winding-sheet, while the left rests upon the top of a species of shield
on which is engraved the following quatrain, which was indicated by a
dart placed between the fingers of the left hand:

"Il n'est vivant, tant soit plein d'art,
Ni de force pour resistance,
Que je ne frappe de mon dard,
Pour bailler aux vers leur pitance."

Which may be translated "There is none living, however artful or strong
to resist, that I do not strike with my dart, to give to the worms
their share." Underneath this somewhat trite observation is a sort of
monogram, the upright of which is supported by an M. When the church,
the cemetery, and the charniers of the Innocents were all suppressed in
1786, this figure was transferred to the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie,
afterward to the Musee des Monuments francais, by M. Alexandre Lenoir,
then to the Louvre, and finally to the Beaux-Arts.

"In the Middle Ages, Death played a very important part; in the arts,
the games, and the ornamentation, his image was everywhere. The
churches, the cemeteries, and the charniers were covered with epitaphs
and with sinister phrases relating to death, and paraphrases of the _De
profundis_ and the _Dies irae_. At every step, says the author of the
_Legende des trepasses_, the thought of the life eternal presented
itself, sombre and terrible;--the melancholy chants and lamentations
sobbing under the vaults of the churches hung with black, the hurried
tolling of the death-bell which seemed to appeal for help and to sound
the tocsin of eternity, the slow and solemn processions of the monks and
the penitents intoning in the public squares the seven psalms of
penitence, the great dance macabre performed in the cemeteries and the
city streets, the representation of the Last Judgment by the brothers of
the Passion, ... the bell-ringer of the dead making his nocturnal
round,--all these formed an ensemble of awe-inspiring scenes well
calculated to alienate the living from the frailties of this world."

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CATACOMBS, PLACE DENFERT-ROCHEREAU.

After a drawing by A. Sauvage.]

The use of _charniers_ to receive the bones of the dead, disinterred to
make room for more recent corpses in the