The carriage gate and the house door were two contiguous grated gates, adjoining a pavilion built by the architect Perronet, and inhabited by the door-keeper of the cemetery.
These gates, therefore, swung inexorably on their hinges at the instant when the sun disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides.
If any grave-digger were delayed after that moment in the cemetery, there was but one way for him to get out-- his grave-digger''s card furnished by the department of public funerals. A sort of letter-box was constructed in the porter''s window. The grave-digger dropped his card into this box, the porter heard it fall, pulled the rope, and the small door opened.
If the man had not his card, he mentioned his name, the porter, who was sometimes in bed and asleep, rose, came out and identified the man, and opened the gate with his key; the grave-digger stepped out, but had to pay a fine of fifteen francs.
[16] Instead of porte cochere and porte batarde.
This cemetery, with its peculiarities outside the regulations, embarrassed the symmetry of the administration.
It was suppressed a little later than 1830.
The cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, called the Eastern cemetery, succeeded to it, and inherited that famous dram-shop next to the Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted on a board, and which formed an angle, one side on the drinkers'' tables, and the other on the tombs, with this sign: Au Bon Coing.