fficient interest, independent of the absent furniture. The
looking-glasses which spring from the walls called down ejaculations of
delight from a party of dressmakers, who carefully took notes of the
mechanism, "in order to imitate it, my dear, when Paris becomes itself
again." There was a large placard upon the wall of a kind of library,
inviting the attention of the public to the secret arrangements in a
recess whereby the Empress obtained her dresses and linen from some
manufactory of garments above, and an old lady, after having carefully
examined the elaborate details, turned away with a sigh and a shake of
the head. "How foolish of them, after all, not to have done a little for
us in order that they might have continued to abide in this paradise!"
How different was the Empress's apartment this morning, bare and crowded
with the dregs of the Paris population, from the night when I last saw
it, the night of her flight, when bed-clothes still littered the floor,
and gloves and little odds and ends of female finery told of recent
occupation! All was silent then with the stillness of a coming storm;
now the walls re-echo with a stir of unhallowed feet, and the spring
sunshine streams in at the open window accompanied by whiffs from the
garden below, while a distant cry reaches us from the street beyond of
"_Le Vengeur_," "_Le Cri du Peuple_," "_Le dernier ordre du Comite du
Salut Public_," and we detect curls of smoke about the Arch of Triumph,
which remind us that the bombardment still goes on. A reflective sentry
at the door of the _cabinet de travail_ begged me to remark the
portraits set round above the doors. "Those are the Empress's favourite
ladies," he informed me; "are they not _salopines_, one would say, of
the period of Montespan? And those were the ladies who were models for
the women of our land--no wonder that Paris should have become the
Gomorrah that it is!" In the evening the concert was given, and a
wonderful bear-garden the Imperial Palace presented. Members of the
Commune flitted about in red draperies and tried to find room on the
already crowded benches for the struggling mob, who rubbed their hot
faces with their unaccustomed white gloves, and used such language to
each other as, it is to be hoped, those august walls have seldom heard.
Meanwhile, the crowd increased in numbers, and by 8 o'clock the
reception rooms were full, and some 2,000 people still stood in a long
string in the garden outside.