Page:The American fugitive in Europe.djvu/93

Rh 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 Tuilries 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 plebeians 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 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 8