The Insurrection in Paris | Page 6

felt the
heavy hand of the spectre of departed glory, and people who exulted at
beholding the hidden recesses of an Imperial mansion laid bare to the
jokes and ribaldry of Belleville and La Villette. Every class of Parisian
society was represented in the throng that swayed and hustled through
the rooms, but the saddest sight of all was a knot or two of decrepit
veterans from the Invalides who leant against the balustrade of the
grand staircase, and gazed with pinched-up lips and dry eyes at the
National Guards on duty, lounging and carousing down below. The
stairs were littered with bedding and cooking utensils, shirts and
stockings hanging to dry over the gilt railings, while in the square at the
stairs' foot were ranged benches and boards on trestles, and there the
soldiers of the Guard sat in picturesque groups enough, contrasting in
the carelessness and dirt of their general appearance with the lavish
ornaments of marble and gilt work which served as a background to
their figures. Marching orders, more or less thumbed and torn, hung in
fragments from the panelled walls; names in pencil and names in ink,
and names scrawled with a finger-nail, defaced the doors and staircase
wall. A sentry stood at every door to see that the citizens behaved
themselves--a precaution by no means unnecessary, the outward aspect
of certain members of the crowd being taken into consideration. In the
Salle de la Paix a number of women were busy uncovering a number of
chairs for the promised concert, and in the Salle des Maréchaux beyond,
where the concert was to be given, velvet benches were already
occupied by old ladies in white caps with baskets in their hands, who
presented a stern aspect of endurance, as though they were determined
to sit there through the preparations as well as the promised
entertainment, and still to continue sitting until turned out by sword and
bayonet. The "Salle des Maréchaux" exists no more except in name, for
men on ladders were employed covering up the portraits which
decorate the hall with screens of red silk--I suppose lest the past glory
of French heroes should pale the brilliancy of the National Guard, just

as the bas-reliefs of the Vendôme Column act as an outrage upon the
susceptibilities of the Commune. White cloths were being tied over the
busts of Napoleon's Generals, and everything relating to the past
carefully obliterated--a rather foolish proceeding, considering that the
bee-spangled Imperial curtains still hang over the doors, and festoons
of the same drapery decorate the gallery above. The brocaded panels of
the Salle du Trône were objects of much remark among the ladies, as
were the tapestries of the Salle des Gobelins; but the bareness and total
absence of furniture were commented on freely on all sides. Not a chair
or a window blind, or even a door-plate or handle, is to be seen in any
of the rooms, except in those used for the concerts, and the question
arose, naturally enough. "Where is it all gone to?" The same demand
was made so often of an elderly bourgeois on duty at the end of the
Salle de Diane that he was fairly bewildered, and looked round for help,
and hailing the gold stripes on my cap as a haven of relief, he forthwith
seized upon me as a superior officer, and insisted on an explanation.
"You know there were quantities of cases carried off during the time
before Sedan," he said, "but, with all their cunning, they can't have
dismantled a whole palace of this size, can they?" And the crowd stood
round endeavouring to account for the nakedness of the land, until a
remark that the Commune had been feathering their nests with the
chairs and tables dispersed them laughing. The Empress's bedroom was
a great attraction, Chaplin's charming decorations being subjects of
sufficient interest, independent of the absent furniture. The
looking-glasses which spring from the walls called down ejaculations
of delight from a party of dressmakers, who carefully took notes of the
mechanism, "in order to imitate it, my dear, when Paris becomes itself
again." There was a large placard upon the wall of a kind of library,
inviting the attention of the public to the secret arrangements in a recess
whereby the Empress obtained her dresses and linen from some
manufactory of garments above, and an old lady, after having carefully
examined the elaborate details, turned away with a sigh and a shake of
the head. "How foolish of them, after all, not to have done a little for us
in order that they might have continued to abide in this paradise!" How
different was the Empress's apartment this morning, bare and crowded
with the dregs of the Paris population, from the night when I last