r days without flinching, and finally,
in the early days of October, saw the Saxon Duke and his army march
away, Valmy having opened the eyes of Brunswick to the utter futility
and fanfaronnade of the French emigrant noblesse and princes, who had
drawn up for him and persuaded him against his own better judgment to
sign the too famous and fatal proclamation with which he heralded the
Austro-Prussian advance into France. Mayor Andre having thus saved the
grand North-eastern bulwark of France, his services had to be in some
way recognised. But in what way? Paris voted that Lille had deserved
well of the nation, which was obvious enough; also that Lille should get
a million of francs towards repairing damages, which million of francs,
I am assured, never reached Lille; also that a grand monument should
commemorate the valour and constancy of Lille. But the grand monument
was never erected until half a century afterwards, when King Louis
Philippe took the matter up, and carried it through.

With the proclamation of the Republic in September 1792 it ceased to be
meritorious in Mayors and other municipal personages to protect life and
property, repulse foreign invaders and punish domestic criminals.
Varlet, the self-appointed 'Apostle of Liberty,' the man with the
camp-chair and the red cap, whom Carnot, the grandfather of the present
President, actually insisted that the Assembly should welcome to its
floor, gave the keynote of the new order of things. 'We must draw a
veil,' he exclaimed, 'over the Declaration of the Rights of Man!' And a
veil was indeed drawn over the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Here at
Reims, as elsewhere, proscriptions and confiscations were the order of
the day. The glorious Cathedral of Reims itself, the Westminster and
Canterbury in one of France, was in continual peril. Nothing really
saved it and the Archi-episcopal palace but the religious and patriotic
reverence of the people of Reims for the memory of Jeanne d Arc. In that
Archi-episcopal palace the peasant girl of Domremy, the Virgin saviour
of France, had been lodged. In that Cathedral she had stood, her banner
in her hand, and watched the solemn consecration of her mission and her
triumph. The emissaries of plunder and murder from Paris shrank from
driving the Remois to extremities on that issue. But they desecrated the
building and defaced it as much as they dared.

I am told that Robespierre during his dictatorship interfered to put a