This appealed to him as a twofold duty: the curé of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois was nearly eighty years of age, and he was the priest who had accompanied Marie-Antoinette to the scaffold. His curate, M. Paravey, by a strange coincidence, was the priest who had blessed the tombs of the Louvre. In consequence of the change which had been made in the programme, men, placed on the steps of the Church of Saint-Roch, distributed, on the morning of the 14th, notices announcing that the funeral ceremony had been arranged to take place at Saint-Roch and not at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. I was at the Vaudeville, where I believe we were rehearsing _La Famille improvisée_ by Henry Monnier--I have already spoken of, and shall often again refer to, this old friend of mine, an eminent artiste, witty comrade and _good fellow_! as the English say--when Pachel the head hired-applauder ran in terrified, crying out that emblazoned equipages were forming in line at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois; and people were saying in the crowd that the personages who were getting out from them had come to be present at a requiem service for the repose of the soul of the Duc de Berry. This news produced an absolutely contrary effect upon Arago and myself: it exasperated Arago, but put me very much at ease. I have related how I was educated by a priest, and by an excellent one too; now that early education, the influence of those juvenile memories, gave--I will not say to all my actions--God forbid I should represent myself to my readers as a habitually religious-minded man!--but to all my beliefs and opinions--such a deep religious tinge that I cannot even now enter a church without taking holy water, or pass in front of a crucifix without making the sign of the cross. Therefore, in spite of the violence of my political opinions at that time, I thought that the poor assassinated Duc de Berry had a right to a requiem mass, that the Royalists had a right to be present at it and the curé the right to celebrate it. But this was not Étienne's way of looking at it. Perhaps he was right. Consequently, he wrote a few lines to the _National_ and to the _Temps_ and ran to the spot. I followed him in a much more tranquil manner. I could see that something serious would come of it; that the Royalist journals would exclaim against the sacrilege, and that the accusation would fall upon the Republican party. Arago, with his convinced opinions, his southern fieriness of temperament, entered the church just as a young man was hanging a portrait of the Duc de Bordeaux on the catafalque. Here was where Arago began to be in the right and I to be in the wrong. Behind the young man there came a lady, who placed a crown of immortelles upon it; behind the woman came soldiers, who hung their crosses to the effigy of Henri VI. by the aid of pins. Now, Arago was wholly in the right and I totally wrong. For the ceremony here ceased to be a religious demonstration and became a political act of provocation.