t. Germain l'Auxerrois, from whose belfry the signal was
given for the beginning of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--the same
bells that tolled all that dreadful night while the slaughter went on,
while the effeminate Charles IX fired from the windows of the Louvre upon
stray fugitives on the quay--bells the reminiscent sound of which, a
legend (which I fear is not true) says, at length drove Catharine de
Medici from the Tuileries.

One o'clock! The lights were going out in the Tuileries, had nearly all
gone out. I wondered if the suspicious and timid and wasteful Emperor
would keep the gas burning all night in his room. The night-roar of Paris
still went on, sounding always to foreign ears like the beginning of a
revolution. As I stood there, looking at the window that interested me
most, the curtains were drawn, the window was opened, and a form appeared
in a white robe. I had never seen the Emperor before in a night-gown, but
I should have known him among a thousand. The Man of Destiny had on a
white cotton night-cap, with a peaked top and no tassel. It was the most
natural thing in the land; he was taking a last look over his restless
Paris before he turned in. What if he should see me! I respected that
last look and withdrew into the shadow. Tired and hungry, I sat down to
reflect upon the pleasures of the gay capital.

One o'clock and a half! I had presence of mind enough to wind my watch;
indeed, I was not likely to forget that, for time hung heavily on my
hands. It was a gay capital. Would it never put out its lights, and cease
its uproar, and leave me to my reflections? In less than an hour the
country legions would invade the city, the market-wagons would rumble
down the streets, the vegetable-man and the strawberry-woman, the
fishmongers and the greens-venders would begin their melodious cries, and
there would be no repose for a man even in a public garden. It is
secluded enough, with the gates locked, and there is plenty of room to
turn over and change position; but it is a wakeful situation at the best,
a haunting sort of place, and I was not sure it was not haunted.

I had often wondered as I strolled about the place in the daytime or
peered through the iron fence at dusk, if strange things did not go on
here at night, with this crowd of effigies of persons historical and more
or less mythological, in this garden peopled with the representatives of
the dead, and no doubt by the shades of kings and queens