fire
rose higher and higher; would it not be better that the flames should
reach the house and consume it in an hour or two, than to see it being
gradually pulled down, stone by stone, for many days to come? In the
court I perceived several trucks full of books and linen. A National
Guard picked up a small picture that was lying near the gate; I bent
forward and saw that it was a painting of a satyr playing on a flute.
How sad and cruel all this seemed! The men lounging about looked
demoniacal in the red light of the fire. I turned away, thinking not of
the political man, but of the house where he had worked, where he had
thought, of the books that no longer stood on the shelves, of the
favourite chair that had been burnt on the very hearth by which he had
sat so long; I thought of all the dumb witnesses of a long life
destroyed, dispersed, lost, of the relatives, and friends whose traces
had disappeared from the rooms empty to-day, in ruins to-morrow; I
thought of all this, and of all the links that would be broken by a
dispersion, and I trembled at the idea that some day--in these times
anything seems possible--men may break open the doors of my modest
habitation, knock about the furniture of which I have grown fond,
destroy my books which have so long been the companions of my studies,
tear the pictures from my walls, and burn the verses that I love for the
sake of the trouble they have given me to make,--kill, in a word, all
that renders life agreeable to me, more cruelly than if four Federals
were to take me off and shoot me at the corner of a street. But I am
not a political man. I belong to no party--who would think of doing me
any injury? I am perfectly harmless, with my lovesick metaphor. Ah I how
egotistical one is! It was of my own home that I thought while I stood
in front of the ruin in the Place Saint-Georges. I confess that I was
particularly touched by the misfortunes of that house, because it
awakened in me the fear of my own, misfortune, most improbable, and most
diminutive, it is true, in comparison with that.

[Illustration: HOUSE OF M. THIERS DURING DEMOLITION AND REMOVAL.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 90: It should be remarked that the destruction of M. Thiers'
house coincided with the first success of the Versailles army; it was
the spirit of hatred and mad destructiveness which dictated the
following decree, issued by the Committee of Public Safety on the 10th
of May:--

"Art. 1. The goods and pro