no doors.  I saw through the windows of the long Galerie de Diane the roues of the Regency at supper, and at table with them a dark, semi-barbarian little man in a coat of Russian sable, the coolest head in Europe at a drinking-bout.  I saw enter the south pavilion a tall lady in black, with the air of a royal procuress; and presently crossed the garden and disappeared in the pavilion a young Parisian girl, and then another and another, a flock of innocents, and I thought instantly of the dreadful Parc aux Cerfs at Versailles.

So wrought upon was I by the sight of this infamy that I scarcely noticed the incoming of a royal train at the southern end of the palace, and notably in it a lady with light hair and noble mien, and the look in her face of a hunted lioness at bay.  I say scarcely, for hardly had the royal cortege passed within, when there arose a great clamor in the inner court, like the roar of an angry multitude, a scuffling of many feet, firing of guns, thrusting of pikes, followed by yells of defiance in mingled French and German, the pitching of Swiss Guards from doorways and windows, and the flashing of flambeaux that ran hither and thither.  “Oh!” I said, “Paris has come to call upon its sovereign; the pikemen of Paris, led by the bold Barbaroux.”

The tumult subsided as suddenly as it had risen, hushed, I imagined, by the jarring of cannon from the direction of St. Roch; and in the quiet I saw a little soldier alight at the Rue de Rivoli gate—­a little man whom you might mistake for a corporal of the guard—­with a wild, coarse-featured Corsican (say, rather, Basque) face, his disordered chestnut hair darkened to black locks by the use of pomatum—­a face selfish and false, but determined as fate.  So this was the beginning of the Napoleon “legend”; and by-and-by this coarse head will be idealized into the Roman Emperor type, in which I myself might have believed but for the revelations of the night of strange adventure.

What is history?  What is this drama and spectacle, that has been put forth as history, but a cover for petty intrigue, and deceit, and selfishness, and cruelty?  A man shut into the Tuileries Garden begins to think that it is all an illusion, the trick of a disordered fancy.  Who was Grand, who was Well-Beloved, who was Desired, who was the Idol of the French, who was worthy to be called a King of the Citizens?  Oh, for the light of day!

And it came, faint and tremulous, touching the terraces of the palace and the Column of Luxor.  But what procession was that moving along the southern terrace?  A squad of the National Guard on horseback, a score or so of King’s officers, a King on foot, walking with uncertain step, a Queen leaning on his arm, both habited in black, moved out of the western gate.  The King and the Queen paused a moment on the very spot where Louis XVI. was beheaded, and then got into a carriage drawn by one horse and were driven rapidly along the quays in the direction of St. Cloud.  And again Revolution, on the heels of the fugitives, poured into the old palace and filled it with its tatterdemalions.