naparte was by and by to reap the
credit. These bodies completed the civil revolution, which the
Constituent and the Legislative Assemblies had left so mischievously
incomplete that, as soon as ever the Convention had assembled, it was
besieged by a host of petitioners praying them to explain and to pursue
the abolition of the old feudal rights. Everything had still been left
uncertain in men's minds, even upon that greatest of all the
revolutionary questions. The feudal division of the committee of general
legislation had in this eleventh hour to decide innumerable issues, from
those of the widest practical importance, down to the prayer of a remote
commune to be relieved from the charge of maintaining a certain mortuary
lamp which had been a matter of seignorial obligation. The work done by
the radical jurisconsults was never undone. It was the great and
durable reward of the struggle. And we have to remember that these
industrious and efficient bodies, as well as all other public bodies and
functionaries whatever, were placed by the definite revolutionary
constitution of 1793 under the direct orders of the Committee of Public
Safety.

* * * * *

It is hardly possible even now for any one who exults in the memory of
the great deliverance of a brilliant and sociable people, to stand
unmoved before the walls of that palace which Philibert Delorme reared
for Catherine de' Medici, and which was thrown into ruin by the madness
of a band of desperate men in our own days. Lewis had walked forth from
the Tuileries on the fatal morning of the Tenth of August, holding his
children by the hand, and lightly noticing, as he traversed the gardens,
how early that year the leaves were falling. Lewis had by this time
followed the fallen leaves into nothingness. The palace of the kings was
now styled the Palace of the Nation, and the new republic carried on its
work surrounded by the outward associations of the old monarchy. The
Convention after the spring of 1793 held its sittings in what had
formerly been the palace theatre. Fierce men from the Faubourgs of St.
Antoine and St. Marceau, and fiercer women from the markets, shouted
savage applause or menace from galleries, where not so long ago the
Italian buffoons had amused the perpetual leisure of the finest ladies
and proudest grandees of France. The Committee of General Security
occupied the Pavillon de Marsan, looking over a dingy space that the
co