When the Bastile was destroyed, a prisoner was found who had suffered so severely from the cold and damp of its dungeons that his lips had split completely open, leaving his teeth exposed. Carlyle describes the commandant of the fortress carried along in the hands of an infuriated mob, crying out with piteous supplication: "O friends, kill me quick!" The fury was indeed natural, but better resource against tyranny had been the calm, strong will and deliberate judgment. It is little to kill the tyrant and destroy his tools. We must study to find out what qualities in the ruler and the ruled make tyranny possible, and then defeat it, once and forever.
The hospital of the _Invalides_ was built by Louis XIV., as a refuge for disabled soldiers. This large edifice forms a hollow square, and is famous for its dome,--one of the four real domes of the world, the others being the dome of St. Sophia, in Constantinople; that of St. Peter's, in Rome; and the grand dome of our own Capitol, in Washington.
I have paid several visits to this interesting establishment, with long intervals between. When I first saw it, fifty years ago, there were many of Napoleon's old soldiers within its walls. On one occasion, one of these old men showed us with some pride the toy fortifications which he had built, guarded by toy soldiers. "There is the bridge of Lodi," he said, and pointing to a little wooden figure, "there stands the Emperor." At this time, the remains of the first Napoleon slumbered in St. Helena.
I saw the monument complete in 1867. It had then been open long to the public. The marble floor and steps around the tomb of the first Napoleon were literally carpeted with wreaths and garlands. The brothers of the great man lay around him, in sarcophagi of costliest marble, their names recorded not as Bonapartes, but as Napoleons. A dreary echo may have penetrated even to these dead ears in 1870, when the column of the Place Vendome fell, with the well-known statue for which it was only a pedestal, and when the third Napoleon took his flight, repudiated and detested.
But to return. In 1851 I again saw Paris. The _coup d'état_ had not then fallen. Louis Napoleon was still President, and already unpopular. Murmurs were heard of his inevitable defeat in the election which was already in men's minds. Louis Philippe was an exile in Scotland. While I was yet in Paris, the ex-King died; but the announcement produced little or no sensation in his ancient capital.