One of the most moving epitaphs I ever read — actually it is an inscription — is in Ixelles cemetery, Brussels, on the tomb of a girl who had been the mistress of Gen. Georges Boulanger, a former War Minister of France. She died in July 1891; that September, heartbroken, Boulanger made the supreme romantic gesture, one that many, many bereft lovers have threatened, but very, very few have carried through: He shot himself at her tomb. He is buried beside her, and his last, impassioned cry rings out in bronze:

AI-JE BIEN PU VIVRE
2 MOIS 1/2 SANS TOI!

(‘How did I live two and a half months without you!’) Romeo said nothing more poignant.

— J. Bryan, Hodgepodge: A Commonplace Book, 1986