a concourse!" "Madame," said the
governor of Paris, "I may tell you, without fear of offending the
dauphin, that they are so many lovers." The heir apparent to the throne
of France is called the dauphin; and, until the death of Louis XV.,
Louis and Maria Antoinette were called the dauphin and dauphiness. Louis
seemed neither pleased nor displeased with the acclamations and homage
which his bride received. His singularly passionless nature led him to
retirement and his books, and he hardly heard even the acclamations with
which Paris was filled.

Arrangements had been made for a very brilliant display of fire-works,
in celebration of the marriage, at the Place Louis XV. The hundreds of
thousands of that pleasure-loving metropolis thronged the Place and all
its avenues. The dense mass was wedged as compactly as it was possible
to crowd human beings together. Not a spot of ground was left vacant
upon which a human foot could be planted. Every house top, every
balcony, every embrasure of a window swarmed with the multitude. Long
lines of omnibuses, coaches, and carriages of every description, filled
with groups of young and old, were intermingled with the countless
multitude--men and horses so crowded into contact that neither could
move. It was an impervious ocean of throbbing life. In the center of
this Place, the pride of Paris, the scene of its most triumphant
festivities and its most unutterable woe, vast scaffolds had been
reared, and they were burdened with fire-works, intended to surpass in
brilliancy and sublimity any spectacle of the kind earth had ever before
witnessed. Suddenly a bright flame was seen, a shriek was heard, and the
whole scaffolding, by some accidental spark, was enveloped in a sheet of
fire. Then ensued such a scene as no pen can describe and no imagination
paint. The awful conflagration converted all the ministers of pleasure
into messengers of death. Thousands of rockets filled the air, and, with
almost the velocity of lightning, pierced their way through the
shrieking, struggling, terror-stricken crowd. Fiery serpents, more
terrible, more deadly than the fabled dragons of old, hissed through
the air, clung to the dresses of the ladies, enveloping them in flames,
and mercilessly burning the flesh to the bone. Mines exploded under the
hoofs of the horses, scattering destruction and death on every side.
Every species of fire was rained down, a horrible tempest, upon the
immovable mass. Shrieks fr