I entered the keeper's lodge, and asked him if on the 22nd of
February a woman named Marguerite Gautier had not been buried in
the Montmartre Cemetery. He turned over the pages of a big book
in which those who enter this last resting-place are inscribed
and numbered, and replied that on the 22nd of February, at 12
o'clock, a woman of that name had been buried.

I asked him to show me the grave, for there is no finding one's
way without a guide in this city of the dead, which has its
streets like a city of the living. The keeper called over a
gardener, to whom he gave the necessary instructions; the
gardener interrupted him, saying: "I know, I know.--It is not
difficult to find that grave," he added, turning to me.

"Why?"

"Because it has very different flowers from the others."

"Is it you who look after it?"

"Yes, sir; and I wish all relations took as much trouble about
the dead as the young man who gave me my orders."

After several turnings, the gardener stopped and said to me:
"Here we are."

I saw before me a square of flowers which one would never have
taken for a grave, if it had not been for a white marble slab
bearing a name.