“La mort est un repos éternel.” Death is but an eternal sleep. These words were posted in every cemetery of the city of Nevers by order of Joseph Fouché, the Représentant-en-mission assigned to the department of Nièvre in central France on 10 October 1793. Never before had such a clearly atheist statement been made publicly by a member of the French government. The inhabitants of two villages on the outskirts of Paris, Ris and Mennecy, followed suit, declaring to the Convention, on 30 October, that they were renouncing the Catholic faith. Three weeks earlier, on 5 October, the Convention had adopted a new calendar cleansed of any reference to Christianity; the starting point was no longer the birth of Christ but the founding of the first Republic on 22 September 1792. Months were divided into three ten-day units, the decades, the tenth day, the decadi, substituting for Sunday.