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.
I continued at the bottom of my heart to cherish regretful memories of England; I had lived so long in that country that I had adopted its habits: I could not reconcile myself to the dirt of our houses, our staircases, our tables, to our uncleanliness, our noisiness, our familiarity, the indiscretion of our loquacity; I was English in manners, in taste, and to a certain degree in thought; for, if, as it is said, Lord Byron sometimes drew inspiration for his Childe-Harold from René it is also true to say that my eight years' residence in Great Britain, preceded by a journey in America, together with my long habit of talking, writing, and even thinking in English, had necessarily influenced the turn and expression of my ideas. But gradually I came to relish the good-fellowship for which we are distinguished, that charming, swift, easy commerce of thought, that utter absence of arrogance and prejudice, that heedlessness of fortune and names, that natural level of all ranks, that equality of mind which makes French society incomparable and redeems our faults: after a few months' residence among us, one feels that he can no longer live except in Paris.
*
I locked myself into my entre-sol and gave myself up entirely to work. In my intervals of rest, I went and reconnoitred in various directions. The Circus in the middle of the Palais-Royal had been filled up; Camille Desmoulins no longer held forth in the open air; one no longer saw bands of prostitutes going round, virginal attendants of the goddess Reason, and walking under the conduct of David, costumier and corybant. At the outlet of each alley, in the galleries, one met men crying sights: "galanty shows," "peep-shows," "physical cabinets," "strange animals;" in spite of all the heads that had been cut off, idlers still remained. From the cellars of the Palais-Marchand came bursts of music, accompanied by the double diapason of the big drums: it was perhaps there that dwelt the giants whom I sought, and whom immense events must necessarily have produced. I went down: an underground ball was jigging amidst seated spectators drinking beer. A little hunchback, perched on a table, played the violin and sang a hymn to Bonaparte, which ended with these lines:
Par ses vertus, par ses attraits.
Il méritait d'être leur père[378]!