Page:Ninety-three.djvu/142

 post, a detail worthy of note. This post was in one single piece, and was ten metres in length. Few caryatides have accomplished as much as this post; for years it held up the weight of the Revolution. It bore cheering, enthusiasm, insults, noise, tumult, the immense chaos of anger, riot. It never gave way. After the Convention, it saw the Conseil des Anciens. The eighteenth Brumaire relieved it.

Percier then replaced the wooden pillar with columns of marble, which were less durable.

The ideal of architecture is sometimes strange; the architect of the Rue de Rivoli had the trajectory of a cannon-ball for his ideal, the architect of Carlsruhe had a fan for his ideal; a gigantic bureau drawer seems to have been the ideal of the architect who planned the hall where the Convention first sat the tenth of May, 1793; it was long, high, and flat. On one of the long sides of the parallelogram was a wide semicircle; this was the amphitheatre, with seats for the representatives, but without tables or desk; Garan-Coulon, who wrote much, wrote on his knee; opposite the seats was the tribune; in front of the tribune, a bust of Lepelletier-Saint-Fargeau; behind the tribune, the president's arm-chair.

The head of the bust came a little above the edge of the tribune, which caused its removal later on.

The amphitheatre was composed of nineteen semi-circular benches, rising one behind another; portions of the benches, prolonged the amphitheatre into the two corners.

Below, in the horseshoe at the foot of the tribune, stood the ushers.

On one side of the tribune, in a black wooden frame, was fastened to the wall a placard nine feet high, bearing on two pages, separated by a sort of sceptre, the declaration of the rights of man; on the other side was an empty space which was filled later by a similar frame containing the constitution of the year II., the two pages of which were separated by a sword. Above the tribune, above the head of the orator, from a deep box divided into two compartments, filled with people, fluttered three great tricolored flags resting almost horizontally on an altar bearing this word, "LAW." Behind this altar rose, like the sentinel of free speech, an enormous Roman