r valuables found
in the apartments of the Duchess, were deposited in a bathing-tub, on
which a workman seated himself as guard and suffered no one to approach
until the aforesaid valuables could be conveyed by a detachment of the
Polytechnic School to the Government treasury. The story runs that, on
the night succeeding the sack of the Tuileries, the conquerors chose a
king and queen, and that, in the palace hall, was spread a banquet
composed of the viands found in the Royal kitchen and the wines found in
the Royal cellars. The queen, who was a soubrette more noticeable for
beauty than for cleanliness of person, garbed in Royal robes which she
well became, and with a coronet upon her stately brow, was seated in a
chair of state and received the most extravagant homage from her willing
subjects, while groups of gamins, in the long crimson liveries of the
Royal household, boisterously frolicked before the sans culotte court
amid roars of merriment.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A MEMORABLE NIGHT.

Generally, the rogues throughout Paris, intimidated by the awful,
immediate and certain penalty for crime, forsook, for the time, their
calling. A man who attempted to fire the Palais Royal was shot at the
Prefecture. Another, for a like attempt on buildings in the Rue Monceau,
met a like fate. In the Rue Richelieu lay the bodies of two thieves,
each with a ball through the breast, and over the aperture the word
"Thief" on a label. In like manner were eight more robbers executed at
once on the Place de la Madeleine. A woman of the street wrested a
bracelet from a lady's wrist; she was instantly seized by the bystanders
and shot. But for this summary punishment of malefactors by the people,
dreadful that night would have been the state of Paris, without laws to
enforce or a police to enforce them. It is true the Chateau of Neuilly
was sacked and burned, as well as the splendid villa of the Baron
Rothschild at Parennes; but both were supposed to be the property of the
King. It is true, also, that some rails on the Northern Railway were
torn up, and a viaduct between Paris and Amiens, and another between
Amiens and the frontier of Belgium were demolished; and that the
railway stations at St. Denis, Enghien and Pontoise and the bridge at
Asnieres had been destroyed; but all this was done to prevent the
concentration upon the citizens of Paris of additional Royal troops.

A workman entered a house and demanded bread. Meat and wine we