aken the place before them and now, as
though spell-bound by an absorbing spectacle, stood motionless, making
no sign of moving on. Yet the whole crowded group was pervaded by a
calmness, a solemn earnestness, not often found among the worshippers
in church. Rudolf, whose curiosity was awakened, forced his way
through the living wall to the front rank, and suddenly stood--before
the monument of Baudin, the republican representative of the people
who, on the 3d of December, 1851, was shot down in the streets of Paris
by drunken soldiers, as, girdled with the tri-coloured sash, which made
him recognizable as a member of the legislature, he protested from the
top of a barricade against Bonaparte's _coup d'etat_. A familiar
anecdote is associated with the death of this hero. As, surrounded by
a few persons of similar views, he was preparing to ascend the
barricade, some workmen passing by shouted derisively: "There goes a
twenty-five franc man!" This was the insult with which the
proletarians, who were systematically incited against the National
Assembly, designated the representatives of the people, alluding to
their daily pay. Baudin calmly answered: "You will see presently how
one can die for twenty-five francs!" and a moment after, fell under the
bullets of the soldiery.

At the sight of the monument Rudolf felt the emotion which it awakens
in every spectator. On a rectangular stone pedestal lies the life-size
bronze figure of Baudin, draped to the breast in a cloak, the left hand
hanging in the relaxation of death, while the right convulsively
clutches a symbolical table of laws, with the inscription "La Loi,"
through which passes a treacherous rent. Baudin's face is that of a
middle-aged man, with commonplace features, smooth-shaven lips and
chin, and the regulation whiskers. But this ordinary countenance
becomes grand and heroic by a horrible hole in the forehead, from which
blood and brains have gushed. Oh, how such a hole in the brow, pierced
by a bullet sent to murder liberty, transfigures a man's visage! A
supernatural radiance appears to stream from this tragical opening,
into which we cannot gaze without having our eyes overflow with tears.

Rudolf was more touched by the unspeakably pathetic monument than any
of the others who reverently surrounded it; for he remembered how
narrowly he, too, had escaped a fate akin to that of the martyr before
whose statue he had unexpectedly wandered. As he follo