Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/518

 contemplated for so long a time. Under the Empire these works were pushed with serious activity, and at the time when the building was burned by the Commune it was about to receive its last embellishments.

The saddest spectacle, perhaps, to be seen in Paris is on the left bank of the Seine; here, from the Rue du Bac to the barracks of the Quai d'Orsay there is a long succession of imposing ruins.

That of the Palace of the Legion of Honor is, perhaps, the most saddening, because this beautiful monument which recalled to the mind ideas of grandeur and nobility, while it at the same time offered to the eye a picture of exquisite grace, gives rise, by the contrast of the past with the present, to the most lugubrious impressions.

This Palace, a beautiful specimen of the ingenious art of the eighteenth century, was built in 1786 for a rich foreigner, the Prince of Salm-Kirburg. It was inhabited for a time by Madame de Staël, under the Directory. The Grande Chancellerie of the Legion of Honor was established here in 1803.

During the Commune it served for headquarters to the Citizen Eudes, an assassin whom the revolution of the 4th of September had found in prison and set at liberty. Here were brought all the furniture and private effects which were taken from the house of the Marquis de Gallifet. The equipages of the Marquis were also brought here, and, needless to say, everything was pillaged. The silver of the Hotel of the Legion of Honor at St. Denis, which had been brought to the Grande Chancellerie at the commencement of the first siege to save it from the avidity of the Prussians, was also stolen.

The building was set on fire at the four corners after the walls had been smeared with petroleum, notwithstanding the energetic resistance of the concierge, Hamel, who was carried off and thrown into prison. The Archives of