from every gate of
the garden, until the last loiterer passed and the gendarmes closed the
portals for the night. Before the lamps were lighted along the Rue de
Rivoli and in the great square of the Revolution, the garden was left to
the silence of its statues and its thousand memories. I often used to
wonder, as I looked through the iron railing at nightfall, what might go
on there and whether historic shades might not flit about in the ghostly
walks.

Late in the afternoon of the 18th of June, after a long walk through the
galleries of the Louvre, and excessively weary, I sat down to rest on a
secluded bench in the southern grove of the garden; hidden from view by
the tree-trunks. Where I sat I could see the old men and children in that
sunny flower-garden, La Petite Provence, and I could see the great
fountain-basin facing the Porte du Pont-Tournant. I must have heard the
evening drumming, which was the signal for me to quit the garden; for I
suppose even the dead in Paris hear that and are sensitive to the throb
of the glory-calling drum. But if I did hear it,--it was only like an
echo of the past, and I did not heed it any more than Napoleon in his
tomb at the Invalides heeds, through the drawn curtain, the chanting of
the daily mass. Overcome with fatigue, I must have slept soundly.

When I awoke it was dark under the trees. I started up and went into the
broad promenade. The garden was deserted; I could hear the plash of the
fountains, but no other sound therein. Lights were gleaming from the
windows of the Tuileries, lights blazed along the Rue de Rivoli, dotted
the great Square, and glowed for miles up the Champs Elysees. There were
the steady roar of wheels and the tramping of feet without, but within
was the stillness of death.

What should I do? I am not naturally nervous, but to be caught lurking in
the Tuileries Garden in the night would involve me in the gravest peril.
The simple way would have been to have gone to the gate nearest the
Pavillon de Marsan, and said to the policeman on duty there that I had
inadvertently fallen asleep, that I was usually a wide-awake citizen of
the land that Lafayette went to save, that I wanted my dinner, and would
like to get out. I walked down near enough to the gate to see the
policeman, but my courage failed. Before I could stammer out half that
explanation to him in his trifling language (which foreigners are
mockingly told is the best in the world for conversation