I long wished that the image of Louis XVI. might be set up on the spot where the martyr shed his blood: I should no longer be of that opinion. The Bourbons must be praised for thinking of Louis XVI. at the first moment of their return. They were bound to touch their foreheads with his ashes, before placing his crown on their heads. Now I think that they ought not to have gone further. It was not in Paris, as in London, a committee which tried the monarch: it was the whole Convention; thence the annual reproach which a repeated funeral ceremony seemed to make to the nation, apparently represented by a complete assembly. Every people has fixed anniversaries for the celebration of its triumphs, its disorders, or its misfortunes, for all have, in an equal measure, desired to keep up the memory of one and the other: we have had solemnities for the barricades, songs for St. Bartholomew's Night, feasts for the death of Capet; but is it not remarkable that the law is powerless to create days of remembrance, whereas religion has made the obscurest saint live on from age to age? If the fasts and prayers instituted for the sacrifice of Charles I. still survive[230], it is because, in England, the State unites religious to political supremacy and because, by virtue of that supremacy, the 30th of January 1649 has become a _feria._ In France things go differently: Rome alone has the right to command in religion; thenceforth, of what value is an order published by a prince, a decree promulgated by a political assembly, if another prince, another assembly have the right to expunge them? I therefore think to-day that the symbol of a feast which may be abolished, or the evidence of a tragic catastrophe not consecrated by religion, is not fitly placed on the road of the crowd carelessly and heedlessly pursuing its pleasures. At the time in which we live, it is to be feared lest a monument raised with the object of impressing horror of popular excesses might prompt the longing to imitate them: evil tempts more than good; when wishing to perpetuate the sorrow, one often perpetuates only the example. The centuries do not adopt the bequests of mourning: they have present cause enough for weeping, without undertaking to shed hereditary tears as well. [Sidenote: Reflections at Saint-Denis.] On beholding the catafalque leaving the Cemetière de Desclozeaux[230b], laden with the remains of the Queen and King, I felt a strong emotion; I followed it with my eyes with a fatal presentiment. At last Louis XVI. resumed his couch at Saint-Denis; Louis XVIII., on his side, slept at the Louvre. The two brothers were together commencing a new era of legitimate kings and sceptres: vain restoration of the throne and the tomb, of which time has already swept away the dual dust.