On the 30th of December of the year 1814, the Legislative Chambers were prorogued to the 1st of May 1815, as though they had been convoked for the assembly of Bonaparte's _champ-de-mai._ On the 18th of January, the remains were exhumed of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. I was present at this exhumation in the cemetery[223] in which Fontaine[224] and Percier[225] have since, at the pious call of Madame la Dauphine, and in imitation of a sepulchral church at Rimini, raised what is perhaps the most remarkable monument in Paris. This cloister, formed of a concatenation of tombs, strikes the imagination and fills it with sadness. I have spoken, in Book IV. of these Memoirs, of the exhumations of 1815[226]. In the midst of the bones, I recognised the Queen's head by the smile which that head had given me at Versailles. [Sidenote: The 21st of January.] On the 21st of January, was laid the first stone of the ground-work of the statue which was to be erected on the Place Louis XV., and which was never erected. I wrote the funeral splendour of the 21st of January; I said: "The monks who came with the Oriflamme[227] to meet the shrine of St. Louis will not receive the descendant of the Sainted King. In the subterraneous abodes where dwelt those annihilated kings and princes, Louis XVI. will lie alone!... How is it that so many dead have risen? Why is Saint-Denis deserted? Let us rather ask why its roof has been restored, why its altar is left standing. What hand has reconstructed the vault of those caverns and prepared those empty tombs? The hand of that same man who was seated on the throne of the Bourbons[228]! O Providence, he thought that he was preparing sepulchres for his race, and he was but building the tomb of Louis XVI.[229]!"