Proceeding under my false name, and convinced that I was compromising my friend Fontanes, to my great astonishment, on entering the Champs-Élysées, I heard the sound of violins, horns, clarionets and drums. I saw public balls, at which men and women were dancing; farther on, the Tuileries Palace appeared to my eyes, against the background of its two great clumps of chestnut-trees. As for the Place Louis XV.[376], it was bare: it had the decay, the melancholy and deserted look of an old amphitheatre; one crossed it quickly; I was quite surprised to hear no moans; I was afraid of stepping in the blood of which not a trace remained; my eyes could not tear themselves from the place in the sky where the instrument of death had raised its head; I thought I saw my brother and my sister-in-law in their shirts, standing, bound, beside the blood-stained machine: it was there that the head of Louis XVI. had fallen. In spite of the gaiety in the streets the church-steeples were dumb; it seemed to me as though I had returned on the day of infinite sorrow, on Good Friday. M. de Fontanes lived in the Rue Saint-Honoré, near Saint-Roch. He took me home with him, introduced me to his wife, and then took me to his friend, M. Joubert, where I found a temporary shelter: I was received like a traveller of whom one has heard speak. The next day I went to the police, under the name of La Sagne, to lodge my foreign passport and to receive in exchange a permit to remain in Paris, which was renewed from month to month. In a few days I hired an _entre-sol_ in the Rue de Lille, on the side of the Rue des Saints-Pères. I had brought with me the _Génie du Christianisme_ and the first sheets of the work, printed in London. I was directed to M. Migneret[377], a worthy man, who consented to recommence the interrupted printing, and to advance me something to live on. Not a soul knew of my _Essai sur les révolutions_, notwithstanding what M. Lemierre had written to me. I unearthed the old philosopher, Delisle de Sales, who had just published his _Mémoire en faveur de Dieu_, and went to call on Ginguené. He lodged in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Germain, near the Hôtel du Bon La Fontaine. His porter's box still bore this inscription: "Here we honour each other with the title of citizen and say thee and thou. Shut the door behind thee, if you please." I went up: M. Ginguené, who hardly recognised me, spoke to me from the height of the grandeur of all that he was and had been. I humbly retired, and did not endeavour to renew such disproportionate relations.