Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/249

 lady, after having carefully examined the elaborate details, turned away with a sigh and a shake of the head. 'How foolish of them, after all, not to have done a little for us in order that they might have continued to abide in this paradise!' How different was the Empress's apartment this morning, bare and crowded with the dregs of the Paris population, from the night when I last saw it, the night of her flight, when bed-clothes still littered the floor, and gloves and little odds and ends of female finery told of recent occupation! All was silent then with the stillness of a coming storm; now the walls re-echo with a stir of unhallowed feet, and the spring sunshine streams in at the open window accompanied by whiffs from the garden below, while a distant cry reaches us from the street beyond of Le Vengeur,' Le Cri du Peuple,' 'Le dernier ordre du Comité du Salut Public,' and we detect curls of smoke about the Arch of Triumph, which remind us that the bombardment still goes on.

"A reflective sentry at the door of the cabinet de travail begged me to remark the portraits set round above the doors. 'These are the Empress's favorite ladies,' he informed me; 'are they not salopines, one would say, of the period of Montespan? And those were the ladies who were models for the women of our land—no wonder that Paris should have become the Gomorrah that it is!' In the evening the concert was given, and a wonderful bear*garden the Imperial Palace presented. Members of the Commune flitted about in red draperies and tried to find room on the already crowded benches for the struggling mob, who rubbed their hot faces with their unaccustomed white gloves, and used such language to each other as, it is to be hoped, those august walls have seldom heard. Meanwhile the crowd increased in numbers, and by eight o'clock the reception rooms were full, and some 2,000 people still stood in a long string in the garden outside.