e thought that this gloomy presentation lacked in
consistency,--this method of government could scarcely be practised by
"the most intelligent race."

The street revolutions of 1831 and 1848, which finally expelled from
power the royal houses of Bourbon and Orleans, presented the usual
characteristics of these popular uprisings in the capital, in the result
of which the nation always acquiesced meekly. One of the most senseless
of the acts of excess in the former is illustrated in our engraving of
the pillage of the archbishop's house, February 15, 1831, from an
unpublished design by Raffet, in the possession of M. Cain, the
sculptor. The mob had, the evening before, sacked the church and the
presbytere of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, and on this day, incited to
higher game, they broke into the residence of the archbishop, adjoining
Notre-Dame. Everything was broken, overturned, flung out of the windows
and into the Seine, rare books, precious manuscripts, rich crucifixes,
missals, chasubles,--"that which was, on this day of folly, lost for art
and science is incalculable." The heart of Louis XVI, which the doctor
Pelletan had placed in a leaden box, sealed with his own seal, and
presented to Monseigneur Quelen, was thrown into the river. Louis Blanc,
in his _Histoire de dix ans_, relates that Monsieur Thiers,
sous-secretaire d'Etat in the ministry of finance, was seen walking
about amidst this ruin with a satisfied countenance and a smile upon his
lips.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE MOULIN DE LA GALETTE, RUE DE NORVINS.

From a photograph.]

The bodies of the first victims of the revolution of February, 1848,
killed in a collision with a detachment of the 14th regiment of the
line, were placed in an open car and paraded through the streets at
night by the light of torches, to excite the fury of the populace. "They
are assassins who have struck us down; we will avenge ourselves! Arms!
give us arms!" The death-chariot, escorted by the crowd, proceeded to
the office of the _National_, where the procession was harangued by
M. Garnier-Pages, and then to the Rue Montmartre, to the office of
another liberal journal, _La Reforme_. "A man standing in the cart, his
feet in the blood, lifted from time to time in his arms the body of a
woman, showed it to the people, and then deposited it again on the heap
of dead which made for it a gory couch." About two o'clock in the
morning, this funeral cortege deposited the corpses at t