Ménage, the walls were completed, covered with notices which had flooded Paris at the time of the return from Varennes. One read thus: "The king returns; whoever cheers him will be beaten, whoever insults him will be hanged." Another, thus: "Peace. Hats on the head. He is going to pass before his judges." Another, thus: "The king has aimed at the nation. He has hung fire; it is the nation's turn to shoot now." Another: "Law! Law!" It was within these walls that the Convention judged Louis XVI.
At the Tuilleries, where the Convention began to sit on the tenth of May, 1793, and which was called the National Palace, the place of assembly occupied the entire space between the Pavilion de l'Horloge, called Pavilion of Unity, and the Pavilion Marsan, called Pavilion of Liberty. The Pavilion de Flore was called the Pavilion of Equality. The assembly hall was reached by the grand staircase of Jean Bullant. Under the second story occupied by the assembly, the entire ground floor of the palace was a sort of long guardroom, filled with bundles and camp beds of the armed troops which watched over the Convention. The assembly had a guard of honor, called the "grenadiers of the Convention."
A tricolored ribbon separated the castle, where the assembly was held, from the garden where the people came and went.
III.
Let us finish describing the hall where the sessions were held. Everything about that terrible place is full of interest.
What struck one's notice on entering was a lofty statue of Liberty, standing between two large windows.
Forty-two metres long, ten metres wide, eleven metres high, these were the dimensions of what had once been the theatre of the king, and which was to be the theatre of the Revolution. The elegant, magnificent hall built by Vigarani for the courtiers disappeared beneath the rough timber-work which in '93 supported the weight of the people. This framework on which the public tribunes were erected, had for its only point of support, a single
