the bridge that crosses the Durance, between Cavailhon and
Chateau-Renard, on its way to Avignon, the ancient papal city
which a decree, issued the 25th of May, 1791, eight years earlier,
had reunited to France--a reunion confirmed by the treaty signed
in 1797, at Tolentino, between General Bonaparte and Pope Pius
VI.

The carriage entered by the gate of Aix and, without slackening
speed, traversed the entire length of the town, with its narrow,
winding streets, built to ward off both wind and sun, and halted at
fifty paces from the Porte d'Oulle, at the Hotel du Palais-Egalite,
which they were again beginning to quietly rename the Hotel du
Palais-Royal, a name which it bore formerly and still bears to-day.

These few insignificant words about the name of the inn, before
which halted the post-chaise which we had in view, indicate
sufficiently well the state of France under the government of
the Thermidorian reaction, called the Directory.

After the revolutionary struggle which had occurred between the
14th of July, 1789, and the 9th Thermidor, 1794; after the days
of the 5th and 6th of October, of the 21st of June, of the 10th
of August, of the 2d and 3d of September, of the 21st of May, of
the 29th Thermidor and the 1st Prairial; after seeing fall the
heads of the King and his judges, and the Queen and her accusers,
of the Girondins and the Cordeliers, the Moderates and the Jacobins,
France experienced that most frightful and most nauseous of all
lassitudes, the lassitude of blood!

She had therefore returned, if not to a need of monarchy, at