January 9th, 1873. Fine.

Today Napoleon III died in England after suffering from bladder stones.

January 10th. Fine.

This afternoon we visited a cemetery (we forgot to ask its name), which occupies a forty-acre site on a low hill in the eastern outskirts of Paris [the Père-Lachaise Cemetery]. Inside it there is hardly any room to spare apart from a single wide road for carriages and lanes between the grave-plots. The graves of the poor are marked with wooden crosses painted either black or white, while the middle classes erect headstones and memorials for their dead. Wealthy people construct family vaults of stone about twenty square yards in size with rectangular niches like shelves to store the coffins.

Today there was a funeral for what seemed to be a family of lowly means. A single hearse appeared accompanied by relatives, all on foot, and the wooden coffin was lowered into a grave about six feet deep. To conclude the service, the priest looked down at the coffin and scattered a handful of earth on top. The party was mourning the loss of a young woman, and all eyes were filled with tears, but not one person gave voice to their grief. From our observation of both sexes in the West – from high to low and old to young, even to babes in arms – we found them to be rather placid in temperament.