CHAPTER VI.

PARIS CONTINUED.

T was a beautiful, sunny Sabbath afternoon, and as by the cruel (!) regulations of the authorities the Louvre is closed at 4 p. m. when we reluctantly took our departure, we strolled through the beautiful Champs Elysees, which is the favorite promenade of the gay Parisians, and which presents many singular phases of life to a stranger. On that broad thoroughfare you may see people dressed in almost every garb of the world, and hear a confusion of tongues, such as Babel hardly equaled, see half a dozen Punch-andJudy shows all going on at the same time, see nice little wagons drawn by goats, and filled with pretty and handsomely dressed children, and then the polite and well dressed Parisians, especially the ladies, who are noted the world over for their handsome figures, neat gloves and boots, and dresses perfectly fitting, and all looking as only a French woman can look, from the fair Parisienne, dressed in her silks and satins, to the maiden in the plainest attire — all this, I say, presents a panorama of gay and careless life to be seen, I presume, in only one city in the world.

I could hardly realize that this was Paris which had furnished the bloody orgies of the Revolution, and the

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horrid outrages of the sans culottes, when the women of the lower classes actually brought their knitting to the very foot of the scaffold, there to gloat over the misery of the unhappy victims, and to scream exultantly, à bas les aristocrats ("down with the Aristocrats "), at the prisoners brought in carts to the guillotine, whose only crime, frequently, was that of occupying a little higher social position than their wicked persecutors. I next wended my way to the famous Place de la Concorde, which is grand and imposing at any time, but presents a wondrously beautiful appearance with its myriad gas lights after night, and where the guillotine did its horrible office during the Revolution, and I was curious to see this spot which had been watered with the blood of all that was most exalted and noblest in the history of France.

Some of the most important events in French history have taken place upon this truly historic spot. It was formerly called the Place Louis Quinze, from a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XV., which formerly stood there, but during the heat of the Revolution it was torn down and melted into cannon, and the mob changed the name to the Place de la Revolution, and here erected a statue of Liberty, to which Madame Roland alluded in her famous dying words on the scaffold, when she pointed toward the statue and exclaimed in heartrending accents, "Oh, Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!" The guillotine was erected here, near the famous obelisk of Luxor, and here it is believed the lives of

2,800 persons were taken, most of them upon the flimsiest pretenses.

For a short time during the Reign of Terror in 1793, the guillotine was removed to the Place de Carrousel, but was soon after restored to its former location. On the occasion of the festivities connected with the marriage of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, in 1770, and, as if presaging what afterwards occurred to these royal personages on that ill-fated spot, a panic originated by the bursting of a rocket, caused the vast assemblage to push each other into the ditches, etc., with which the place was then filled, causing the deaths of 1,200 people, and seriously injuring 2,000 more, and from this you may form some idea of the vast size of the place.

At the eastern and the western entrance of the place are to be seen two fine marble groups representing fiery horses being controlled by their groom, near the center is a magnificent fountain, and around the Place, at regular intervals, are to be seen eight allegorical monuments, representing eight of the principal cities of France, and, it is said, but I know not how truly, that each group faces toward the city which it represents. The eight cities are Lille, whose monument was destroyed by cannon during the reign of the Commune, but is now restored; Strasburg, which is habitually draped in mourning to typify the loss of that city which was held by France for 200 years (it having been taken from Germany by Louis XIV.), and with it the province of Alsace and Lorraine (as part

of the price of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-71), Bordeaux, Nantes, Marseilles, Brest, Rouen, and Lyons, where the Terror raged as madly, almost as

in Paris itself.

The obelisk of Luxor of which I have spoken, dates back to the time of Sesostris the Great, of whom Herodotus, the historian of Egypt, discourses, and weighs 500,000 pounds, and cost France to get it here and place it in position the sum of $40,000. It is 72 feet high, and seven feet square at the base, and five feet at the top, and there are said to be 1,600 Egyptian characters traced upon it. The next morning we took our seats in our wagonettes for the purpose of seeing all we could of Paris that day, and we first drove to the Mecca of all Frenchmen, as well as the place that interests strangers from many lands, need I say where? to the tomb of the great Napoleon; who at thirty-six was First Consul, and at forty-six, the master of Europe, but who, after having tasted all human glories, had to taste the bitterness of Waterloo, and to "eat his proud heart out," upon the lonely sea-girt rock of St. Helena, under the insulting and arrogant espionage of the brutal Sir Hudson Lowe, who was especially selected for that post because of his well known meanness of character, as no English gentleman would consent to act the part of a spy and jailer. As Byron says of him after that first and last of fields"

"Ambition's life and labors all were vain;

He wears the shattered links of the world's broken chain.”

The famous tomb of the Emperor is directly beneath the gilded dome of the Church of the Invalides, which is one of the landmarks of Paris, where a circular marble balustrade surrounds the crypt, which is about 20 feet below the spectator and 36 feet wide, who must be content with looking on from above, as entrance to the crypt is not allowed to visitors. Two grand staircases of marble lead down to the entrance of the tomb, which is marked with the royal "N" (Napoleon's monogram), and over the entrance are inscribed a few words from Napoleon's will in regard to the final disposition of his remains, and of which the following is the translation: "I desire that my ashes should rest upon the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well." At each side of the entrance to the tomb is a Corinthian column crowned with a funeral urn, and dedicated to his intimate personal friends in the days of his prosperity, the Marshals Duroc and Bertrand, and who did not desert him in his hour of need, they having shared with him his exile at St. Helena.

The light is admitted from above through colored glass, and the effect upon the gilded surroundings of the tomb is perfectly wonderful, even on a dark day, which was the case when I saw it, and the light falling upon the high altar, with its ten marble steps, and the figure of the Savior on the Cross above the crypt, all seemed bathed in indescribable glory. The sarcophagus, which occupies the center of the crypt, is a single block, 12 feet long and 6 feet wide, and above this is the tomb,