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 spies of every party came and went. People never spoke there.

The bar of the Convention was several times removed. Usually, it was at the president's right hand.

At the ends of the hall, the vertical partitions which closed the concentric semicircles of the amphitheatre, left between them and the wall two narrow, deep lobbies from which opened two dark square doors. These were means of entrance and exit.

The representatives entered the hall directly by a door opening from the Terrace des Feuillants.

This hall, dimly lighted in the daytime by small windows, poorly lighted in the evening with ghastly lamps, had a strange nocturnal gloom about it. This dim illumination, together with the evening shades, made the sessions by lamplight dismal. The people could not see each other; from one end of the hall to the other, from right to left, groups of indistinct faces insulted each other. People met without recognizing one another. One day as Laignelot was hurrying to the tribune he ran against some one in the inclined passage. "Beg pardon, Robespierre," he said. "Whom do you take me for?" replied a harsh voice. "Beg pardon, Marat," said Laignelot.

Two of the lower tribunes, to the right and left of the president were reserved, for strange to say, there were privileged spectators at the Convention. These were the only tribunes having any drapery. In the centre of the architrave this drapery was caught up by two gold tassels. The tribunes for the people were bare.

The effect of all this was intense, savage, regular. Savage correctness; this is a suggestion of the whole Revolution. The hall of the Convention offers the most complete specimen of what artists have since called "architecture Messidor"; it was massive and slender. The builders of that period took symmetry for beauty. The last word of the Renaissance had been spoken under Louis XV., and a reaction followed. The noble in art had been carried to insipidity, and purity to monotony. There is such a thing as prudery in architecture. After the dazzling orgies in form and color of the eighteenth century, art was put on a diet, and allowed nothing but the straight line. This sort of progress ended in ugliness. Art reduced to a skeleton, was the result. This was the