whim of a tyrant may be gratified. Louis commanded; Versailles arose, a
palace of rare delight for princes and nobles, for wits and courtly
prelates, for grave philosophers and ladies frail as fair. A palace and a
hell, a grim monument to regal egoism, created to minister to the inflated
vanity of a despot, an eternal warning to mankind that the abuse of
absolute power is an accursed thing. Every flower, in those wide gardens
has been watered with the tears of stricken souls; every stone in that
vast pile of buildings was cemented with human blood. None can estimate
the toll of anguish exacted that Versailles might be; none can tell all
its cost, since for human suffering there is no price. The weary toilers
went to their doom, unnoticed, unhonoured, their misery unregarded, their
pain ignored, And the king rejoiced in his glory, while his poets sang
paeans in his praise.

But the day of reckoning came, and that day was the Terror. The heirs of
those who toiled made their account with the heirs of those who played.
The players died bravely, like the gallant gentlemen they were; their
courage is applauded, a world laments their fate. The misery, thus
avenged, is forgotten; all the long agony of centuries, all the sunless
hours, all the darkness of a land's despair. For that sadness was hidden;
it was but the exceeding bitter lot of the poor, devoid of that dramatic
interest which illumines one immortal hour of pain. Yet he who would
estimate aright the Terror, who would fully understand the Revolution,
must reflect not only upon the suffering of those who fell victims to an
outburst of insensate frenzy, but also upon the suffering by which that
frenzy was aroused. In a few months the French people took what recompense
they might for many decades of oppression. They exacted retribution for
the building of Versailles, of all the chateaux of Touraine; for all the
burdens laid upon them since that day when liberty was enchained and
France became the bond-slave of her monarchs. Louis XVI. paid for the