Victor Noir was the rather punkish nom de plume of Yvan Salmon (1848-1870), a journalist at the republican newspaper La Marseillaise. On 10 January 1870 he called upon Pierre Bonaparte, a hothead cousin of Napoléon III, with the intention of organizing a duel for his editor-in-chief. The visit turned ugly, a pistol shot was fired, and Victor Noir, aged just 22, was fatally wounded. In order to quell popular outrage, the authorities decreed that his funeral should take place in Neuilly, then as now an enclave of the monied establishment. In spite of this, 100,000 people launched an insurrection that ultimately spelled the end of the Napoleonic régime. In 1891 the mortal remains of Victor Noir, by then a republican icon, were transferred to Père-Lachaise cemetery.

Apparently Victor Noir was to marry the day after he was shot dead and it is this ‘fact’ that explains the secret powers attributed to his grave. His striking tombstone is the work of Amédée-Jules Dalou and depicts the young journalist just after being fatally shot. His mouth is open, his arms are relaxed, and his top hat has fallen from his head. But more noticeably still, his pants are loose at the waist and swollen by a tumescent ‘member’. Legend has it that the sexual frustration of dying before his wedding day caused his penis to remain erect for three days. However that may be, for the past 113 years visitors to Père-Lachaise—primarily young women imploring fertility and erotic fulfillment—have been furtively caressing this appendage as well as the tip of his boots, turning them a lustrous golden colour in the process.

Recently, after complaints from certain straight-laced habitués of Père-Lachaise, the City of Paris surrounded the tomb with a protective fence that bore the notice : Any alteration of this monument by graffiti, indecent rubbing or other means is punishable by law.

According to Wikipedia, there is a further installment in the Victor Noir melodrama: ‘Recently, a fence has been erected around the statue of Noir, so as to deter contact with the statue. Due to the outcry of the female population of Paris however, it was torn down again.’ In my scarce moments of leisure I like to sit back with a quadruple J&B on the rocks and ponder the comical inclusiveness of the phrase “the female population”: in my mind’s eye I see hundreds of thousands—nay, millions—of outraged, hormonal Parisiennes taking to the streets to salvage their right to polish whichever knob they choose.