The proposition of Barère was adopted, and the National Assembly decreed “that the tombs and mausoleums of the former kings in the church of St. Denis should be destroyed.” The execution of the decree was undertaken on the 6th of August, and three days afterwards fifty-one tombs had been demolished. One of the most remarkable of these tombs was the earliest--the tomb erected by St. Louis in memory of “Le Roi Dagobert,” of facetious memory, famed in song for having put on his breeches “à l’envers.” It is one of the most curious monuments of the thirteenth century, and at least as interesting by its subject as by its architecture. In three zones superposed, the first above the second, the second above the third, is represented the legend of Dagobert’s death. In the lowest of the three zones we see St. Denis revealing to a sleeping anchorite named Jean that King Dagobert is suffering torments; and close by the soul of Dagobert, represented by a naked child bearing a crown, is being maltreated by demons frightfully ugly, who are holding their prey in a boat. In the middle zone the same demons are running precipitately from the boat in the most grotesque attitudes at the approach of the three saints--Denis, Martin, and Maurice--who have come to rescue the soul of King Dagobert. In the highest of the bas-reliefs the soul of King Dagobert is free. The naked child is now standing in a winding-sheet, of which the two ends are held by St. Denis and St. Martin, and angels are awaiting him in Heaven, whither he is about to ascend. The commission appointed by the Convention did not destroy this tomb. They had it transported, with many other objects of artistic or of intrinsic value, to Paris; and on presenting to the National Assembly what had been saved from the general wreck, the representative of the commission spoke as follows:--“Citoyens représentatives--” Les prêtres ne sont pas ce qu’un vain peuple pense; Notre crédulité fait toute leur science.[B] Such was the language formerly held by an author whose writings prepared our revolution; the inhabitants of Franciade (the new Republican name given to the religious and royal St. Denis) have just proved to you that it is not foreign either to their mind or their heart. It is said that a miracle caused the head of the saint which we now offer you to travel from Montmartre to St. Denis. Another miracle, greater and more authentic, the miracle of the regeneration of opinions, brings this head to Paris. The new translation is marked, however, by this difference. The saint, according to the legend, kissed his hand respectfully at each step; and we have not once been tempted to kiss the offensive relic. His journey will not this time be chronicled in the martyrologies, but in the annals of reason; and it will be doubly useful to the human species. This skull and the holy rags which accompany it will cease at last to be the ridiculous object of popular veneration and