arrived. However, I was out this morning at an early hour, and on the
Champs Elysees; and again took a walk over the place where the
guillotine stood, when its fatal blade was sending so many unprepared
spirits into eternity. When standing here, you have the Palace of the
Tuileries on one side, the arch on the other; on a third, the classic
Madeleine; and on the fourth, the National Assembly. It caused my blood
to chill, the idea of being on the identical spot where the heads of
Louis XVI. and his Queen, after being cut off, were held up to satisfy
the blood-thirsty curiosity of the two hundred thousand persons that
were assembled on the Place de la Revolution. Here Royal blood flowed as
it never did before or since. The heads of patricians and plebians, were
thrown into the same basket, without any regard to birth or station.
Here Robespierre and Danton had stood again and again, and looked their
victims in the face as they ascended the scaffold; and here, these same
men had to mount the very scaffold that they had erected for others. I
wandered up the Seine, till I found myself looking at the statue of
Henry the IV. over the principal entrance of the Hotel de Ville. When we
take into account the connection of the Hotel de Ville with the
different revolutions, we must come to the conclusion, that it is one of
the most remarkable buildings in Paris. The room was pointed out where
Robespierre held his counsels, and from the windows of which he could
look out upon the Place de Greve, where the guillotine stood before its
removal to the Place de la Concorde. The room is large, with gilded
hangings, splendid old-fashioned chandeliers, and a chimney-piece with
fine antiquated carvings, that give it a venerable appearance. Here
Robespierre not only presided at the counsels that sent hundreds to the
guillotine; but from this same spot, he, with his brother St. Just and
others, were dragged before the Committee of Public Safety, and thence
to the guillotine, and justice and revenge satisfied.