manners, the grands seigneurs so brave and gallant, striving in every way by their witty conversation and their music (for they sang and played in the prisons all through that awful time) to distract the women and make them forget the terrible doom that was hanging over them.  Many well-known people went straight from the palace to the scaffold.  It seemed a fitting place for the sittings of the Senate and the deliberations of a chosen body of men, who were supposed to bring a maturer judgment and a wider experience in the discussion of all the burning questions of the day than the ardent young deputies so eager to have done with everything connected with the old regime and start fresh.

After we had inspected the palace we walked about the gardens, which were charming that bright October morning,—­the sun really too strong.  We found a bench in the shade, and sat there very happy, W. smoking and wondering what the next turn of the wheel would bring us.  A great many people were walking about and sitting under the trees.  It was quite a different public from what one saw anywhere else, many students of both sexes carrying books, small easels, and campstools,—­some of the men such evident Bohemians, with long hair, sweeping moustache, and soft felt hat,—­quite the type one sees in the pictures or plays of “La Vie de Boheme.”  Their girl companions looked very trim and neat, dressed generally in black, their clothes fitting extremely well—­most of them bareheaded, but some had hats of the simplest description—­none of the flaunting feathers and bright flowers one sees on the boulevards.  They are a type apart, the modern grisettes, so quiet and well-behaved as to be almost respectable.  One always hears that the Quartier Latin doesn’t exist any more—­the students are more serious, less turbulent, and that the hardworking little grisette, quite content with her simple life and pleasure, has degenerated into the danseuse of the music-halls and barriere theatres.  I don’t think so.  A certain class of young, impecunious students will always live in that quarter and will always amuse themselves, and they will also always find girls quite ready and happy to enjoy life a little while they are young enough to live in the present, and have no cares for the future.  Children were playing about in the alleys and broad, open spaces, and climbing on the fountains when the keepers of the garden were not anywhere near—­their nurses sitting in a sunny corner with their work.  It was quite another world, neither the Champs-Elysees nor Montmartre.  All looked perfectly respectable, and the couples sitting on out-of-the-way benches, in most affectionate attitudes, were too much taken up with each other to heed the passer-by.