Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

Members of City Council of the third district, having been ordered to issue to Alexandre Lenoir two boxes containing the bones of Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) and Jean de La Fontaine, "expressed a desire to see these bones. Lenoir hastened to respond to this wish, and the box was opened with Molière. "We noticed," he said, "all the bones of a human body, packed, which, upon examination, we seemed to be those of a man of low stature and a weak constitution, age fifty years. The head appeared above us a nicely shaped, having a unified and well done. "

The new burial Molière was therefore placed the Elysee dens of French Monuments, near the tomb of La Fontaine and that of Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux.

Lenoir had run a hard stone sarcophagus, carved in its interior and focused on four stone pillars too hard, all adorned with masks of comedy and attributes of Comedy, with this inscription: Molière is in this tomb; all surrounded with myrtle, roses and cypresses.

"A glass marble, said the description of Museum (Volume V, p. 197), surmounts the monument, which was first raised to the father of philosophy, and we note with pleasure that the birds come to play souient in this cup and drink it. "

Molière would again change the burial. The Government of the Restoration had nothing better to do than to remove the Museum of French Monuments, under the pretext of restoring the monuments, who were saved and preserved, to which most churches no longer existed.

The transport of bodies of Molière and La Fontaine to the Cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, S.J. took place March 6, 1817, under a decree of the prefect of Department of the Seine.

The bodies were handed over to Mr. Caperon, steward of the Hotel de Ville, before witnesses who signed the minutes, and transported immediately to their new destination. Later, Alexandre Lenoir mausoleums had run went to Cemetery Eastern repossess two small coffins of lead, which contained the remains of (video>) Molière and La Fontaine.

Link (here) to the Google translation. Link (here) to the original in French contained in the book entitled, Iconographie Molieresque, by Paul Lacroix