Aug. 20, 2014 10:30 p.m. ET
PARIS—Because dead men tell no tales, visitors to Père Lachaise cemetery lend their ears to Bertrand Beyern.
On a daily basis, the 48-year-old leads crowds through the timeworn tombs, charging them for the one thing the celebrated Parisian cemetery's management won't provide: information on its famous tenants.
Countless tourists have wound up lost in this labyrinthine graveyard, fruitlessly searching for the graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Marcel Proust. Entrance to the cemetery is free, but its staff doesn't give tours—or even basic directions—to the 3 million visitors who enter the site every year. Père Lachaise is a place of eternal rest—the cemetery's management says—not an amusement park.
That solemn principle has spawned a cottage industry with a number of self-appointed tour guides who regale visitors with anecdotes on the dead. It has also bred cutthroat competition, where the spoils of tourist season go to the guide with the best source material and acting chops.
"The cemetery is a theater," Mr. Beyern says, scoffing at his rivals. "I'm the only one. The others are pretenders."
The role of Père Lachaise's leading man, however, is hotly contested.
Striding amid the tombs in a safari jacket, scarf and fedora in sweltering heat, 54-year-old Thierry Le Roi casts himself as the sole heir to Père Lachaise's tour-guide throne. Such standing, he says, was conferred on him by a retired nonagenarian guide that Mr. Le Roi regards as the cemetery's original raconteur.
"The baton was passed," says Mr. Le Roi, whose name literally translates as "the king."
The two raconteurs each charge 10 euros (about $13) per client but otherwise they are a study in contrasts. Mr. Beyern has branded himself the cemetery's chief "necrosophe," a term he coined from the Greek roots for "dead" and "wisdom." Mr. Le Roi calls himself a "necro-romantique" in a nod to Romantic-era art.
The silver-haired Mr. Beyern totes a black-leather briefcase loaded with documentation on the dead as he crisscrosses the nearly 110-acre cemetery. His tours last four hours, and he never pauses for food or water, allowing his lips to become chapped.
Mr. Le Roi carts speakers in his satchel so he can play Edith Piaf songs at her grave. And he frequently refreshes his crowd with blasts from a spray bottle, generating a trail of mist he refers to as his "spa treatment."
Each man gathers clients at different meeting points, charting separate routes through the cemetery. But their paths inevitably cross at popular graves, exacerbating the duel over who wields the last word on some of history's most august legacies.
Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Le Roi recounts, was buried in Père Lachaise without his own heart, because the Polish composer insisted on having the organ posthumously removed and shipped to Poland.
But the real reason behind the composer's heartless burial, Mr. Beyern says, is the celebrated Pole suffered from a "horrid fear that he might be buried too soon and buried alive."
Holding court at the grave of French writer Honoré de Balzac, Mr. Le Roi recounted how Victor Hugo—who delivered the eulogy—slipped and tumbled into his late colleague's open grave. The incident produced a "deadly silence" that mortified Hugo.
"They had to exhume him," Mr. Le Roi quipped.
Mr. Beyern casts doubt on the anecdote: "It's true he slipped. Did he fall in? I don't know."
Both men say their stories are backed up by decades of rigorous research, though Mr. Le Roi says some of his anecdotes belong to the cemetery's "oral tradition."
Pierre Hugo, the 67-year-old great-great grandson of Victor Hugo, said he had never heard of his ancestor's funeral misstep. "But it's totally possible, why not?" he added.
The graveside yarns are so effective they inspire repeat visits. Marshall Leaffer, a law professor at the University of Indiana, was on his second tour with Mr. Le Roi in less than two years. "I love his diction," Mr. Leaffer said. "I couldn't imagine doing this with anybody else."
Père Lachaise was founded in 1804 as part of a citywide campaign to relocate Paris's cemeteries to the edge of town, away from the living. The cemetery struggled—selling only a couple thousands plots—until officials hit upon the idea of burying celebrities there.
In 1817, city officials relocated what were believed to be the remains of Molière and Jean de la Fontaine—who had died more than a century earlier—to a small plot in the heart of Père Lachaise. The bodies were placed in a pair of stately stone sarcophagi, ringed by wrought iron.
Proximity to stardom was a powerful selling point. About a decade later, Père Lachaise boasted 33,000 tenants. Says Mr. Le Roi: "Molière and La Fontaine are merely here as a marketing strategy."
The cemetery's first tour guides came much later, appearing in the wake of World War II. Mr. Beyern took interest in the cemetery at the age of six, memorizing the writings of its entombed poets.
"I never wanted to do anything but lead tours here," he says.
As a budding guide, Mr. Beyern recalled spotting an older man roaming the cemetery with a notebook filled with details on the dead. That was Vincent de Langlade, a guide who had been working in Père Lachaise since the 1950s. "My master," Mr. Le Roi says.
Before Mr. de Langlade retired a decade ago, he began to train Mr. Le Roi as a successor, passing on anecdotes in study sessions that would last hours, Mr. Le Roi says. Upon retirement, Mr. de Langlade presented him with a remnant salvaged from the tomb of a Napoleonic officer, Mr. Le Roi says.
"He said: 'take it... keep it.' I felt something very strong. I was speechless," Mr. Le Roi said.
Efforts to reach Mr. de Langlade and his family were unsuccessful. Cemetery officials lost contact with him years ago and Mr. Le Roi couldn't locate him for comment.
Mr. Le Roi's legacy at the cemetery is likely to outlast Mr. Beyern in other ways: He is currently negotiating to buy a plot with a prime location inside Père Lachaise. Mr. Beyern has no such plans.
A design for Mr. Le Roi's grave is already in the works. It calls for a map of the cemetery to be engraved onto his tomb. Lost tourists, Mr. Le Roi says, will be able to refer to the map, because it will feature an arrow indicating the location of his grave with the words: "You Are Here."
