lamation from time to time. And the result of all this? Absolutely
nothing at all! No! stop! There were a few statutes proposed--and every
one amused himself immensely. "Well! so much the better," said
one. "Every one laughed, and no harm was done to anybody."

We beg your pardon! There was a great deal of harm done--to Monsieur
Courbet.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 57: Gaillard Senior (a sort of Odger), cobbler of Belleville
and democratic stump orator. Appointed, April 8, to the Presidency of
the Commission of Barricades.]

[Footnote 58: As a painter Courbet has been very diversely judged. He
was the chief of the ultra-realistic school, and therefore a natural
subject for the contempt and abuse of the admirers of "legitimate art."
But his later use of the political power entrusted to him has drawn down
upon him the wrath of an immense majority of the French public, which
his artistic misdemeanours had scarcely touched. On the sixteenth of
April he was elected a member of the Commune by the 6th arrondissement
of Paris, and forthwith appointed Director of the Beaux Arts. Until this
time his life had been purely professional, and consequently of mediocre
interest for the general public. He was born at Ornans, department of
the Doubs, in 1819, and received his primary instructions from the Abbe
Gousset, afterwards Archbishop of Rheims. He first applied himself to
the study of mathematics, painting the while, and apparently aiming at a
fusion of both pursuits. He subsequently read for the bar for a short
time, and, finally, adopting art as his sole profession, threw himself
heart and soul into a Renaissance movement as the apostle of a new
style. The peculiarities of his manner soon brought him into notoriety,
and a school of imitators grouped itself around him. His pride became a
proverb. In 1870 he was offered the cross of the Legion of Honour, and
refused it, arrogantly declaring that he would have none of a
distinction given to tradesmen and ministers. The part he took in the
destruction of the Colonne Vendome is familiar to all readers of the
English press. Three weeks after the fall of the Commune he was
denounced by a Federal officer, and discovered at the house of a friend
hiding in a wardrobe, and in September was condemned by the tribunal at
Versailles to six months' imprisonment and a fine of 600 francs--a
slight penalty that astonished everyone.]

LII.

It is forbidden to cross the Place Vendome, and n