Paris: With Pen and Pencil

de la Concorde. It much more appropriately might be called the Place of Blood. So there are other, many other spots in Paris, which deserve a scarlet title, and when wandering a stranger through its

interest to the spot upon which they suffered and died. The reader can have no adequate idea of the feelings with which

o her studies with ardor and delight. They were never harsh in their treatment of her, but always gentle and kind. She acted nearly as she pleased, but seems not to have been spoiled by such a discipline as we might have expected. When she was only nine years old, Plutarch fell into her hands, and she was intensely interested in it-more so than with all the fairy tales she had ever read. From him she drank in republicanism at that early age. She also read Fenelon and Tasso. She spent nearly the whole of her time in reading, though she assisted her mother somewhat in her household duties. The family belonged to the middle-classes, and despised the debaucheries of the higher and lower orders of the people. The mother was pious, and Manon was placed for a year in a convent. She then spent a year with her grandparents, and returned

le to care for his family, and her mother was anxious that she should be married. She did not lack offers. She was beautiful and accomplished, and many suitors presented themselves, but not one whom she could love. Her mother now died, to her gr

es at Rouen and Amiens. He had written several works upon these subjects, and was somewhat celebrated. She took great pleasure in his society, and after five years of friendship, respected, and perhaps loved him. He offered himself and was finally accepted. She says: "In sh

h her husband's relations. She had one child-a daughter-and her life and happiness consis

overlooking the work of the latter; enjoying the happiness of being warmly sheltered in the bosom of my dear little family, and writing to a friend, while the snow is falling on so many p

d made her house the fashionable resort of the elité of Paris. The arrest of the king filled her with alarm. She was not willing to push matters to such extremes. She was one of the noblest of republicans, out she was merciful and moderate in some of her views. Her husband again retired to the country-to-Lyons. Amid the solitude of their own home she grew discontented. She could not, having tasted the sweets of life in Paris, abando

and writes in September of this year: "We are under the knife of Marat and Robespierre. These men agitate the people and endeavor to turn them against the National Assembly." She and her husband were heartily and zealously for the republic, but they were moderate, and entirely opposed to those brutal men who were in favor of filling Paris and France with blood. Madame Roland writes, later: "Danton leads all; Robespierre is his puppet;

complexion had a freshness and color which, joined to her reserved yet ingenuous appearance, imparted a singular air of you

n equal danger with her husband. After the execution of the king, Roland became discouraged, and convinced that he could do no more for France, and he retired with his wife to the country. Here they lived in constant danger of arrest. Roland finding the danger so great, made good his escape, but she was arrested a short time after. She had retired to rest at night, when suddenly her doo

nfamous. She was placed in the prison of St. Pelaige-a filthy and miserable place. The wife of the jailor pitied her and gave her a neat, upper apartment, and brought her books and flowers, and she was comp

wenty-four hours. Twenty-two victims had just poured out their blood, and she was to follow their example. A French writer speaks of her at that time as "full of attractions, tall, of an elegant figure, her physiognomy animated, but sorrow and long imprisonment had left traces of melancholy on her face that tempered her natural vivacity. Something more than is usually found in the eyes of woman, beamed in her large, dark eyes, full of sweetness and expression. She often spoke to me at the grate, with the freedom and courage of a great man. This republican language falling from the lips of a pretty Fre

. Another victim accompanied her. She exhorted him to ascend first, that his courage might not be shaken by witnessing her death. She turned to the statue of Liberty, excl

course. Should he give himself up he would certainly perish, and by the law of France his possessions would be confiscated, and would not, therefore, descend to his child. Were he to die, even by his own hand, the

gnation caused me to quit my retreat. As soon as I heard of the murder of

ich Voltaire used to frequent, and I have stopped to take a cup of chocolate in it. But one day I hunted up number eighteen of the street of Ecole de Medicine. The house was one which Marat used to occupy in the time of the great revolution. We paused a moment upo

ctim. No one was safe. Under his devilish prompting, already some of the truest republicans in France had been beheaded, and every hour some unfortunate man or woman fell beneath his hellish ferocity. Should a fiend be allowed to personate liberty longer? Should a wretch whose very touch scorched and blistered, whose breath was th

l. Enthusiastic to madness, she flew to Paris with but one thought filling her breast-that she was amid the terrors of that time, in the absence of all just law, commanded by God to finish the course of Marat. Everything bent to this idea. She cared nothing for her own life-nothing for her own happiness. She came to the thres

and asked her business. She used deception with him, declaring that some of his bitterest enemies were concealed in the neighborhood of her country home. She named, with truth, some of her dearest fr

ere afterward, by order of government, disinterred and thrown into a common sewer. I scarcely ever stopped on the Place de la Concorde without thinking of Charlotte Corday, and bringing up the dreadful scene in Marat's house, and her own execution. I fancied her as she appeared that day-a smile upon her face, a wild enthusiastic joy in her eyes, as if she had execute

d, and the wretchedly vile, have together lived within its walls and lost their hopes of life, or their desire for it. I could never pass it without a shudder, for though it was not so much a place of execution as a prison, yet so terrible a place was it that many a prisoner has joyfully emerged from its dark walls to the scaffold. It has witnessed the death of many a poor man and woman, stifled with

ideous acts as the city of the fine arts. Deeds have been done within a century, which would put a savage to the blush. The place is still pointed out where a poor girl was burned by a slow fire. S

petrated in this world of ours than that-yet he is the patron of modern civilization, and is on excellent terms with the amiable Queen Victoria. I do not wonder that Rousseau argued that the primitive a

to which bloody histories cling. The paving-stones are, as it were, re

E LA CO

d see the fine building which contains the senate chamber, the bridge over the Seine, and the Quai de Orsay. To the north, and see the row of buildings named Place de la Concorde, with their grand colonnades and the pretentious Madeleine. To the east, and there the green forest of the Tuileries gardens,

m its center look down upon the great open plaza, see the wonderful fountains, gaze up at the obe

of a beautiful woman passes up yonder winding steps to the block. Her hair is dark-not so dark, though, as her genius-lighted eyes -and her forehead is white and nobly pure. She kneels, bows down her head to the block, and is forever dead. It was Charlotte Corday, the enthusiast, who assassinated Marat in his bath. I have seen the place where she killed hi

to die. The agony that she suffered during her trial, and the day that she perished upon the scaffold, no human thought can reckon. The French revolution taught a fearful lesson to king

as if he had been a god-the man whose eloquence could thrill the heart of France, was now a weak creature beneath the iron arm of Robespierre. He had sentenced hundreds to death upon this spot, and was now condemned himself, by

the Place de la Concorde, and its streams of human blood. And now the strange creature who one day laughed wildly in his glee and another was all tears and rage, followed Danton, the man he had worshiped, to t

power, and was a feeble, helpless being. Cruel, stern, without a feeling of mercy in his heart, awful to contemplate in his steel severity, he was, after all, almost the only man of the revolution who was strictly, sternly, rigidly honest. No one can doubt his integrity. He might have been dictat

d hardly realize that within half a century such a terrible drama had been enacted there-a drama whose closin

a word; and then Vergniaud, the pure of heart, executed by his friend Danton; then Dan

ct upon it a statue in honor of Louis XV. The statue was destroyed by the populace in 1792, and the place named Place de la Révolution. In 1800 it took the name it at present

ulty was experienced in removing it to Paris. A road was constructed from the obelisk to the Nile, and eight hundred men were occupied three months in removing it to the banks of the river, where was a flat-bottomed vessel built expressly for it. A part of the vessel had to be sawed off to receive it, so great was its size. It descended the Nile, passed the Rosetta bar, and with great care was towed to C

E LA CO

lost from the beginning to the end of the transaction. It stands upon a single block

the latter inverted. Six tall figures are seated around the larger basins, their feet resting on the prows of vessels, separated from each other by large dolphins which spout water i

view of the Arch of Triumph, which was erecte