I was face to face with my golden future; but how to bridge over the present? Peltier obtained translations from the Latin and the English for me; I worked at translating by day, and at night at the _Essai historique_, into which I introduced a portion of my travels and my day-dreams. Baylis supplied me with the books, and I laid out a few shillings to ill purpose on the purchase of old volumes displayed on the bookstalls. Hingant, whom I had met on the Jersey packet, had become intimate with me. He cultivated literature, he was well informed, and he wrote novels in secret and read me pages of them. He had a lodging not far from Baylis, at the end of a street leading into Holborn. I breakfasted with him every morning at ten o'clock; we talked about politics and above all about my work. I told him how much I had built of my nocturnal edifice, the _Essai_; then I reverted to my labour of the daytime, the translations. We met for dinner, at a shilling a head, in a public-house; thence we made for the fields. Often also we walked alone, for we were both of us fond of musing. I would then direct my steps towards Kensington or Westminster. Kensington pleased me; I wandered about its solitary part, while the part adjacent to Hyde Park became filled with a brilliant multitude. The contrast between my penury and the display of wealth, between my destitution and the crowd, was pleasant to me. I watched the young Englishwomen pass in the distance with that sense of desirous confusion which my sylph had formerly caused me to feel when, after decking her with all my extravagances, I scarce dared lift my eyes upon my handiwork. Death, which I thought that I was approaching, added a mystery to this vision of a world from which I had almost departed. Did ever a look rest upon the foreigner seated at the foot of a fir-tree? Did some fair woman divine the invisible presence of René? [Sidenote: A night in Westminster Abbey.] At Westminster I found a different pastime: in that labyrinth of tombs I thought of mine ready to open. The bust of an unknown man like myself would never find a place amid those illustrious effigies! Then appeared the sepulchres of the monarchs: Cromwell[164] was there no longer, and Charles I.[165] was not there. The ashes of a traitor, Robert of Artois[166], lay beneath the flagstones which I trod with my loyal steps. The fate of Charles I. had just been extended to Louis XVI.; the steel was reaping its daily harvest in France, and the graves of my kindred were already dug.