r support at the skirts of a robust peasant woman wearing
the typical head-dress of Alsace-Lorraine, who snatches the real
Chassepot, whitened to imitate marble (furnished by the courtesy of the
Minister of War), from his failing grasp. The whiting is wearing away
from the real Chassepot, the grime of the Parisian weather is settling
into corners of eyes, under noses, etc.; the pathos and sentiment of the
work suffer accordingly, and it may be doubted whether any pathetic, or
would-be pathetic, work of sculpture is ever really effective, even if
wrought by a very clever contemporary French artist. But it is to be
noticed that on this national and historic site, in what might be called
the physical centre of the nation, the most prominent monument
commemorates, not the national glories and triumphs, but a humiliating
and overwhelming national disaster. Facing the square of the Carrousel,
between the arch and the Louvre, is the much vaster monument of Gambetta
in marble and bronze, with long extracts from his orations in the evil
days of '71 engraved on the tall shaft which rises behind him,--a most
ostentatious commemoration of defeat. Farther west, the great Place de
la Concorde is surrounded by handsome pavilions and balustrades, with
eight stately, seated female figures of heroic size typifying the
principal cities of France. To one of these the traveller's attention is
at once directed by the funerary contributions in which she is half
smothered,--draped flags, great wreaths and disks of immortelles and
black bead-work, similar to those seen on the tombs in the cemeteries,
with commemorative inscriptions: "From the Societies of the Inhabitants
of Alsace-Lorraine;" "14th July, 1898" (the day of the national _fete_,
commemorative of the fall of the Bastile); "_France! Souviens toi!_" on
a huge yellow circle like a life-preserver, and, on a circular disk at
the feet of the statue:

[Illustration QUI VIVE! FRANCE! L. D. P. QUAND MEME]

This curiously-garnished statue is that representing the city of
Strasbourg, which is no longer a French city; and of all the others,
which illustrate nothing particularly mortifying or mournful in the
national history, no proclamation whatever is made. In the centre of the
handsome court-yard of the new and imposing Hotel de Ville, the statue
selected as the central jewel of this _ecrin_, as it were, is Mercie's
_Gloria Victis_, the vanquished here being, again, France. (It should be
sta