del of a monument to the Charter was made: we have never seen anything
but the socle of this monument. Just when a bronze figure representing
the Charter of 1814 was about to be erected, the Revolution of July
arrived with the Charter of 1830. The pedestal of Louis XVIII. vanished,
as fell the pedestal of Louis XV. Now on this same spot we have placed
the obelisk of Sesostris. It required thirty centuries for the great
Desert to engulf half of it; how many years will the Place de la
Revolution require to swallow it up altogether?

In the Year II of the Republic, what the Executive Council called the
"pied d'estal" was nought but a shapeless and hideous block. It was a
sort of sinister symbol of the royalty itself. Its ornaments of marble
and bronze had been wrenched off, the bare stone was everywhere split
and cracked. On the four sides were large square gaps showing the places
where the destroyed bas reliefs had been. Scarcely could a remnant of
the entablature still be distinguished at the summit of the pedestal,
and beneath the cornice a string of ovolos, defaced and worn, was
surmounted by what architects call a "chaplet of paternosters." On the
table of the pedestal one could perceive a heap of debris of all kinds,
in which tufts of grass were growing here and there. This pile of
nameless things had replaced the royal statue.

The scaffold was raised a few steps distant from this ruin, a little
in rear of it. It was covered with long planks, laid transversely, that
masked the framework. A ladder without banisters or balustrade was
at the back, and what they venture to call the head of this horrible
construction was turned towards the Garde-Meuble. A basket of
cylindrical shape, covered with leather, was placed at the spot where
the head of the King was to fall, to receive it; and at one of the
angles of the entablature, to the right of the ladder, could be
discerned a long wicker basket prepared for the body, and on which one
of the executioners, while waiting for the King, had laid his hat.

Imagine, now, in the middle of the Place, these two lugubrious things, a
few paces from each other: the pedestal of Louis XV. and the scaffold of
Louis XVI.; that is to say, the ruins of royalty dead and the martyrdom
of royalty living; around these two things four formidable lines of
armed men, preserving a great empty square in the midst of an immense
crowd; to the left of the scaffold, the Champs-Elysees, to the right
the