This tomb was erected in the Montmartre Cemetery in 1837 by three friends of the deceased, whose names, no longer legible, were inscribed on its sloping lid: Comte Palamède de Forbin-Janson, Comte Honoré de Sussy and Albert Coupon. Gustave Darnay (1814-1837), whose full name was Emile-Fortuné-Gustave Darnay de Laperrière, died at the age of twenty three, but seems to have been a budding author, who collaborated with Honoré de Sussy on the lyrics of two works, one of which, Les Captives, was set to music by de Sussy, and the other, Alice, became an opera by Friedrich von Flotow. He seems to have been an acquaintance of both Alexandre Dumas and of Victor Hugo. The latter wrote to his wife, Adèle on 4 Sept. 1837: "I've been thinking just now of all those friends who I have recently lost [.....], of poor d'Arnay, such a mild and lovable child".

Today, and even when Marco Calderini wrote his monograph on Marochetti (Carlo Marochetti, Turin, 1928), in which this photograph of the tomb was illustrated, it was in a very poor condition. However, a sepia wash drawing of it by Jean-Jacques Champin (1796-1860), was sold by the Galérie de la Nouvelle Athènes in Paris in 2005, and both this and the engraved illustration of it in L.-M. Normand's Monuments funéraires choisis dans les cimetières de Paris et des principales villes de France (Paris, 1863, vol.I, pl.24) give a good idea of its original appearance. These images show a rather stripped and modern-looking tomb chest, with a sloping top, somewhat like a doorstop, with the thin end of the wedge cut off, and at the thick end providing a platform for an angel, whose body and wings seem to continue the upward movement of the slope. The very feminine angel, wearing a neat floral crown, is kneeling, with its arms crossed over its breast, pressing a cross against its right shoulder. This is one of three tombs with angels which Marochetti created in the 1830s, and in which we may see him working up to the more elaborate composition of the Madeleine high altar.

(see Caroline Hedengren-Dillon, "Les monuments funéraires de Carlo Marochetti dans les cimetières parisiens: une découverte au Père Lachaise", Tribune de l'art, 2013, online)