Nearly all the deeds of Richemont, from the time that he became powerful again, confirm the truth of this portrait.  His first thought and his first labor were to restore Paris to France and to the king.  The unhappy city in subjection to the English was the very image of devastation and ruin.  “The wolves prowled about it by night, and there were in it,” says an eye-witness, “twenty-four thousand houses empty.”  The Duke of Bedford, in order to get rid of these public tokens of misery, attempted to supply the Parisians with bread and amusements (panem et circenses); but their very diversions were ghastly and melancholy.  In 1425, there was painted in the sepulchre of the Innocents a picture called the Dance of Death:  Death, grinning with fleshless jaws, was represented taking by the hand all estates of the population in their turn, and making them dance.  In the Hotel Armagnac, confiscated, as so many others were, from its owner, a show was exhibited to amuse the people.  “Four blind men, armed with staves, were shut up with a pig in a little paddock.  They had to see whether they could kill the said pig, and when they thought they were belaboring it most they were belaboring one another.”  The constable resolved to put a stop to this deplorable state of things in the capital of France.  In April, 1433, when he had just ordered for himself apartments at St. Denis, he heard that the English had just got in there and plundered the church.  He at once gave orders to march.  The Burgundians, who made up nearly all his troop, demanded their pay, and would not mount.  Richemont gave them his bond; and the march was begun to St. Denis.  “You know the country?” said the constable to Marshal Isle-Adam.  “Yes, my lord,” answered the other; “and by my faith, in the position held by the English, you would do nothing to harm or annoy them, though you had ten thousand fighting men.”  “Ah! but we will,” replied Richemont; “God will help us.  Keep pressing forward to support the skirmishers.”  And he occupied St. Denis, and drove out the English.  The population of Paris, being informed of this success, were greatly moved and encouraged.  One brave burgess of Paris, Michel Laillier, master of the exchequer, notified to the constable, it is said, that they were ready and quite able to open one of the gates to him, provided that an engagement were entered into in the king’s name for a general amnesty and the prevention of all disorder.  The constable, on the king’s behalf, entered into the required engagement, and presented himself the next day, the 13th of April, with a picked force before the St. Michel gate.  The enterprise was discovered.  A man posted on the wall made signs to them with his hat, crying out, “Go to the other gate; there’s no opening this; work is going on for you in the Market-quarter.”  The picked force followed the course of the ramparts up to the St. Jacques gate.  “Who goes there?” demanded some burghers who had the guard