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