dess.

A goddess! an idol! a toy! since even the man-eating tiger must play
sometimes.

Paris wanted a new religion, and a new toy, and grave men, ardent
patriots, mad enthusiasts, sat in the Assembly of the Convention and
seriously discussed the means of providing her with both these things
which she asked for.

Chaumette, I think it was, who first solved the difficulty:--Procureur
Chaumette, head of the Paris Municipality, he who had ordered that
the cart which bore the dethroned queen to the squalid prison of the
Conciergerie should be led slowly past her own late palace of the
Tuileries, and should be stopped there just long enough for her to see
and to feel in one grand mental vision all that she had been when she
dwelt there, and all that she now was by the will of the People.

Chaumette, as you see, was refined, artistic;--the torture of the fallen
Queen's heart meant more to him than a blow of the guillotine on her
neck.

No wonder, therefore, that it was Procureur Chaumette who first
discovered exactly what type of new religion Paris wanted just now.

"Let us have a Goddess of Reason," he said, "typified if you will by
the most beautiful woman in Paris. Let us have a feast of the Goddess of
Reason, let there be a pyre of all the gew-gaws which for centuries
have been flaunted by overbearing priests before the eyes of starving
multitudes, let the People rejoice and dance around that funeral pile,
and above it all let the new Goddess tower smiling and triumphant. The
Goddess of Reason! the only deity our new and regenerate France shall
acknowledge throughout the centuries which are to come!"

Loud applause greeted the impassioned speech.

"A new goddess, by all means!" shouted the grave gentlemen of the
National Assembly, "the Goddess of Reason!"

They were all eager that the People should have this toy; something to
play with and to tease, round which to dance the mad Carmagnole and sing
the ever-recurring "Ca ira."

Something to distract the minds of the populace from the consequences of
its own deeds, and the helplessness of its legislators.

Procureur Chaumette enlarged upon his original idea; like a true artist
who sees the broad effect of a picture at a glance and then fills in the
minute details, he was already busy elaborating his scheme.

"The goddess must be beautiful... not too young... Reason can only go
hand in hand with the riper age of second youth... she must be decked
out in classi