In the May edition of New English Review, our inquisitive doctor strolls through the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris and discovers a curious tomb of a young Frenchman.

There is nothing like a cemetery, of course, for recalling to oneself the tragic dimension of life, the dimension that our constant busyness and pursuit of distraction is designed to veil from us, and that is largely successful: except that the tragic dimension will sooner or later take its revenge on our attempted insouciance.