Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/516



necessity required that that course should be adopted. The humble employés of the Bank behaved like heroes; some struggling against the conflagration which threatened to annihilate the quarter, while the others remained at their post, awaiting the combat and death.

"What joy when, on Wednesday morning at half-past seven, the first glimpse of the soldiers was seen. The red flag had never sullied the Bank, and haste was made to hoist the tricolor; and to complete the good fortune, M. Rouland returned—behind the soldiers—to resume his post, and deigned to congratulate the various persons on the premises. Marshal de MacMahon gave the National Guards a more flattering recompense, as he permitted them to retain their arms—an honorable exception of which the men were truly worthy."

At the time when Paris was not Paris but Lutèce—that is to say, little more than a mud-village—the site of the Palace of Justice was occupied by a castle or citadel, which served as a residence for the governor of the province, and sometimes for the Cæsar who reigned over Gaul.

A little later, when the dominion of the Franks had succeeded that of the Cæsars—when their barbarous domination had replaced a learned oppression—the long-haired kings divided their time between the Palais des Thermes, situated on the site of the Hôtel Cluny, and then in open country, and this other Palace which stood within their fortifications, and which a long succession of modifications and changes have made the Palais de Justice of the present time.

The first who established himself perpetually in this Palace was Eudes, Count of Paris, and afterwards King of France. Robert the Pious enlarged and embellished it, and during a long succession of years, each king left there some souvenir of his time. It was Saint Louis,