But all the troubles which arose out of the wedding festivities were not so easily terminated.  Little as was the good-will which subsisted between Louis xv. and the Parisians, the civic authorities thought their own credit at stake in doing appropriate honor to an occasion so important as the marriage of the heir of the monarchy, and on the 30th of May they closed a succession of balls and banquets by a display of fire-works, in which the ingenuity of the most celebrated artists had been exhausted to outshine all previous displays of the sort.  Three sides of the Place Louis xv. were filled up with pyramids and colonnades.  Here dolphins darted out many-colored flames from their ever-open mouths.  There, rivers of fire poured forth cascades spangled with all the variegated brilliancy with which the chemist’s art can embellish the work of the pyrotechnist.  The centre was occupied with a gorgeous Temple of Hymen, which seemed to lean for support on the well-known statue of the king, in front of which it was constructed; and which was, as it were, to be carried up to the skies by above three thousand rockets and fire-balls into which it was intended to dissolve.  The whole square was packed with spectators, the pedestrians in front, the carriages in the rear, when one of the explosions set fire to a portion of the platforms on which the different figures had been constructed.  At first the increase of the blaze was regarded only as an ingenious surprise on the part of the artist.  But soon it became clear that the conflagration was undesigned and real; panic-succeeded to delight, and the terror-stricken crowd, seeing themselves surrounded with flames, began to make frantic efforts to escape from the danger; but there was only one side of the square uninclosed, and that was blocked up by carriages.  The uproar and the glare made the horses unmanageable, and in a few moments the whole mass, human beings and animals, was mingled in helpless confusion, making flight impossible by their very eagerness to fly, and trampling one another underfoot in bewildered misery.  Of those who did succeed in extricating themselves from the square, half made their way to the road which runs along the bank of the river, and found that they had only exchanged one danger for another, which, though of an opposite character, was equally destructive.  Still overwhelmed with terror, though the first peril was over, the fugitives pushed one another into the stream, in which great numbers were drowned.  The number of the killed could never be accurately ascertained:  but no calculation estimated the number of those who perished at less than six hundred, while those who were grievously injured were at least as many more.