One of the Parisian landmarks is the Pere Lachaise cemetery. Located in the east of the capital, it is regularly visited by tourists. The cemetery has become the most famous museum of tombstone sculptures, and who would have thought about it 600-500 years ago. In the Middle Ages, this area did not bear any name at all, and was a run-down outskirts of the capital with tangled streets, where the poor lived, and was famous for crime.
Perhaps the first known personalities to be buried at Père Lachaise were the fabulist La Fontaine and the comedian Moliere. Although initially their graves were in a completely different place, the remains of famous Frenchmen were transferred to Père Lachaise only in 1817. Since that time, for two centuries, prominent people not only from France, but also from other countries who happened to die in Paris were buried here.
Of course, there are many Russian graves here - the Decembrist N. Turgenev, Princess Trubetskoy, Countess Dolgoruka, Metropolitan Polycarp, anarchist Nestor Makhno and others. But it is the mausoleum (crypt) that belongs to the names of the famous breeders Demidovs that is still considered almost the main attraction of the cemetery. And the point is not that Nikolai Demidov erected a magnificent monument-mausoleum for his wife who had left this world untimely, but that it is with this crypt and the name of Elizabeth Demidova buried in it that mystical cases are associated, which no one intelligibly still takes explain.
Reward for the one who spends a year in the crypt
It all started with the will of Elizaveta Demidova, in which the daughter of Baron A. M. Stroganov and wife of N. Demidov donated an astronomical amount to someone who could spend 365 days in her crypt, practically a year. There were a lot of people who wanted to get rich overnight, but, as a rule, any of the seekers of wealth faced an unenviable fate.
Allegedly, before everyone who dared to visit the mausoleum, Elizaveta Alexandrovna herself appeared and predicted the future for the daredevil, which turned out to be necessarily tragic. But if a person came to the crypt and turned to her for help, he received good advice. In Parisian society, mentioning the deceased, they called her nothing but the Queen of Spades.
You can believe what is written above, you can not believe it. However, there are many strange mystical cases associated with the name of E. Demidova. One of the latest is the death of a Parisian student named Jacques, who died under the wheels of a taxi in 1950. He is another inheritance hunter, visited the crypt, where Demidova predicted his death.
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Happy prediction from a ghost
In the light of the above, the fate of the courtesan Adele Herriot is interesting. For some time she was the kept woman of Anatoly Demidov, the son of Elizaveta Alexandrovna, and dreamed of marrying a rich descendant of the famous surname. Adele even decided on pregnancy from Anatoly, but he was in no hurry to go down the aisle with her. Then the courtesan resorted to an extreme measure: she went to the crypt for advice and help. In the memoirs left after Adele Herriot, you can read about this visit to the kingdom of the dead. It is worth noting that the girl was quite brave for her time.
So, as the courtesan recalls, everything was calm in the crypt until midnight. Then a fog appeared over the coffin of E. Demidova, gradually turning into a dark clot. A beautiful woman emerged from it. The ghost of Demidova ordered the French woman to forget about her lover forever, since he is Adele's brother. Adele was ordered to get rid of the unborn child, and as a bonus they wished her not to be sad, but to wait for a meeting with an elderly, but rich man.
After a night in the mausoleum, Adele Herriot hurried to her mother, once one of the most famous Parisian courtesans. The mother confirmed her guesses regarding the relationship with Anatoly, admitting that his father Nikolai Demidov had been her lover for a long time, and Adele was born from him. The shocked Adele got rid of the child, broke up with her lover-brother, but was depressed for several months: she did not accept anyone, and did not go anywhere.
Sooner or later, even depression "gets bored": the young girl got bored with the dull life, and she decided to go to the opera. On the very first day, her fateful meeting with Prince Tyufyakin took place - a man in years, but still handsome, and, most importantly, rich. An aristocrat, director of the Imperial Theaters, took Adele Herriot to full maintenance. She lived with him until his death, later remaining a fairly wealthy woman.
The mysteries of the crypt of Elizaveta Demidova have not been solved to this day. Even in the last century, there were those who wanted to receive her inheritance, the size of which is 2 million gold. But someone went crazy, someone resorted to suicide, someone was trapped by a tragic death from the outside, like a student in 1950. To end this pilgrimage, the authorities of Paris decided to permanently close the Demidov mausoleum for visits, therefore, the legacy of Elizabeth Alexandrovna has not been received by anyone so far.