ome hither by
way of Spain.

At the present time, Amiens is a point of no small political interest.
It is the bailiwick of one of the few really notable men of the actual
Republican party in France--- M. Goblet--and yet it is one of the
strongholds of Boulangism. There is an old song, the refrain of which,
as I heard it sung, more years ago than I care to recall, always haunts
me when I visit this ancient city:--

Vive un Picard, vive un Picard,
Quand il s'agit de tete!

The Picards have always shown, not only sense, but a kind of stubborn
independence of character. In the days of anarchy which came upon France
with the brief but ill-omened triumph of the Girondins, Amiens was the
first of the French provincial cities to resist and denounce the too
successful attempt of Danton and the commune of Paris to terrorise
France by a skilful abuse of the imbecility of Roland. The authorities
of Amiens were the first to protest against the outrageous pretensions
of the 'commissioners,' who came there with Roland's commissions in one
hand, and the secret instructions of Roland's colleague and master,
Danton, in the other, to pillage the property of the inhabitants under
the pretence of gathering supplies for the national defence, and to
establish an irresponsible local despotism under the pretence of
suppressing 'treason.' To them, in the first instance, belongs the
credit of compelling Roland to get up before the Assembly on September
17, 1792, and confess that he had 'signed in the council commissions
without knowing anything about the commissioners who were to use them;'
and to them, therefore, in the first instance, history is indebted for
the formal record which shows that the actual fall of the French
monarchy was followed, and its formal abolition preceded, by the letting
loose upon France of a swarm of scoundrels, who filled 'the prisons with
prisoners as to whom no one knew by whom they were arrested; who gave
over to pillage the treasures accumulated in the Tuileries, and in the
houses of the emigrant aristocracy; who conveyed away everything which
could tempt the cupidity of a subaltern, without any record whatever;
and who were delivering over Paris and France to the most absurd folly
and the most insatiable greed.' It was not the fault of Amiens if the
efforts of Mazuyer and Kersaint demanding a law to show 'whether the
French nation was sovereign, or the Commune of Paris,' and the sonorous
eloquence of Vergn