on of Flora. The flames are perceived
at the Assembly. A deputy asks to have the firemen sent to fight this
fire which threatens the whole quarter Saint-Honore. Somebody remarks
that this is the Commune's business. But the Commune, to use a phrase
then in vogue, thinks it has something else to do besides preventing
the destruction of the tyrant's palace. It turns a deaf ear. The
messenger returns to the Assembly. It is remarked that the flames are
doing terrible damage. The president decides to send orders to the
firemen. But the firemen return, saying: "We can do nothing. They
{326} are firing on us. They want to throw us into the fire." What is
to be done? The president bethinks himself of a "patriot" architect,
Citizen Palloy, who generally makes his appearance whenever there are
"patriotic" demolitions to be accomplished. It is he whom they send to
the palace, and who succeeds in getting the flames extinguished. The
Tuileries are not burned up this time. The work of the incendiaries of
1792 was only to be finished by the petroleurs of 1871.

Night was come. A great number of the Parisian population were
groaning, but the revolutionists triumphed with joy. Curiosity to see
the morning battle-field, urged the indolent, who had stayed at home
all day, towards the quays, the Champs-Elysees, and the Tuileries.
They looked at the trees under which the Swiss had fallen, at the
windows of the apartments where the massacres had taken place, at the
ravages made by the hardly extinguished fire. The buildings in the
three courts: Court of the Princes, Court Royal, Court of the Swiss,
had been completely consumed. Thenceforward these three courts formed
only one, separated from the Carrousel by a board partition which
remained until 1800, and was replaced by a grating finished on the very
day when the First Consul came to install himself at the Tuileries.
The inscription which was placed above the wooden partition: "On August
10 royalty was abolished; it will never rise again," disappeared even
before the proclamation of the Empire.

{327}

Squads of laborers gathered up the dead bodies and threw them into
tumbrels. At midnight an immense pile was erected on the Carrousel
with timbers and furniture from the palace. There the corpses of the
victims that had strewed the courts, the vestibule, and the apartments
were heaped up, and set on fire.

The National Guard had disappeared; it figured with the King