Making our way to the little cemetery of Charonne behind, we find in its centre a grass-grown space once the _fosse commune_ of the pits into which the _guillotinés_ were flung in Revolution days. Beyond, near the boundary wall, we see a railed-in tomb, surmounted by the figure of a man in Louis XVIII costume--Bègue, Robespierre’s private secretary. The Revolution over, his chief dead, the man whose hand had prepared for signature so many tragic documents withdrew to the rural district of Charonne, beyond the Paris bounds, led a secluded, peaceful life, cultivated his bit of land and set about preparing for his exit from this earth by designing his own tomb. He sat for the bronze statue we see here, and had the iron railing made to show all the implements of Revolutionary torture with which he was familiar, the wheel that worked the guillotine, the _tenailles_, etc....! Higher up towards Bagnolet we come to a vestige of the ancient Château, a pavilion Louis XV, forming part of the modern Hospice Debrousse. CHAPTER XLIX BOULEVARDS--QUAYS--BRIDGES THE BOULEVARDS The Paris boulevards are one of the most characteristic features of the city. The word _boulevard_ recalls the days when Paris was fortified, surrounded by ramparts, and the city boulevards stretch for the most part along the lines of ancient boundary walls, boundaries then, now lines in many instances cutting through the very heart of the Paris we know. The Grands Boulevards run from the Place de la Madeleine to the Place de la Bastille--gay and smart and modern, in the first kilometres of their course; less smart, busier, more commercial, with more abundant vestiges of bygone days as they stretch out beyond the boulevard des Italiens. The boulevard de la Madeleine follows the line of the ancient boundary wall of Louis XIII, razed during the first years of the eighteenth century. Its upper part on the even-number side was one side of an old thoroughfare reaching as far as Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, known in its early years as Rue Basse du Rempart. The latter part stretching to Rue Caumartin is of recent date. The old Rue Basse des Remparts was bordered by handsome _hôtels_, the dwellings of notable persons of the day: vestiges of several of them were until recent years still seen in boulevard des Capucines--Nos. 16 to 22 razed when the new street Rue Édouard VII was cut. In the reception-room of a seventeenth-century house that stood at the corner of the boulevard and the Rue des Capucines known as the Colonnade, Buonaparte first met Joséphine.