rked objection to retiring to rest before
daylight. He would sing us jolly songs, one of which, "C'est l'amour qui
nous mene,"[13] was a favourite of his.

The Commune went to work very systematically to bring down the huge
column. An incision was made at the base in the shape of a notch; a
double pulley was attached to the balustrade at the top, and another
fixed to the ground in the Rue de la Paix, a rope passing through both
to a capstan. When this was set in motion, after some preliminary
difficulties had been overcome, the column oscillated for a moment, and
then came crashing down in three colossal sections on to a bed of sand,
fascines, and straw prepared for it, there to break up into a thousand
smaller fragments. The statue of the great Emperor had lost its head and
one arm.

An act of vandalism, we say. Yes, but of vandalism with a purpose. We
can fancy Courbet declaring: "The work of art must be sacrificed as a
warning to those who would honour and perpetuate the memory of selfish
aggressors."

It was History herself he meant to drag from her pedestal--History, ever
crowning herself with wreaths of laurel and halos of virtue. It was Art
too he waged war upon, that Art which he deemed had too long served to
glorify the rule of Force: sometimes in a picture or in a legion of
pictures, as at Versailles, exalting Imperialism and inciting us to go
forth and emulate the deeds and misdeeds of our ancestors; sometimes in
a statue of some clever organiser of wholesale slaughter, appropriately
cast in the bronze of cannon taken from the enemy; or, again, in a
barbarous trophy, a triumphal arch--in fact, in a scalp of some kind,
that, from generation to generation, we are taught to gloat over.

This was the wording of the decree which condemned the column to
destruction:--

"THE COMMUNE OF PARIS

"Considering that the Imperial Column of the Place Vendome is a
monument of barbarism, a symbol of brute force, of false glory, an
encouragement of military spirit, a denial of international
rights, a permanent insult offered by the conquerors to the
conquered, a perpetual conspiracy against one of the great
principles of the French Republic, namely fraternity,

"Decrees:--

"_Sole article_--The Vendome Column is to be demolished."

One day--it was a wretched day, the rain pouring in torrents--I went to
see the ruins of Saint Cloud. People were discussing the qu