fasces, as tall as a column. Colossal statues straight against the wall, faced the representatives. The president had Lycurgus on his right and Solon on his left, above the Mountain was Plato.
The pedestals of these statues were simple dies, placed on a long, projecting cornice extending all around the hall and separating the people from the assembly. The spectators leaned their elbows on this cornice.
The black wooden frame containing the rights of man, reached to the cornice and cut into the design of the entablature, breaking the straight line; this caused Chabot to complain, "It is ugly," he said to Vadier.
The heads of the statues were crowned alternately with wreaths of oak and laurel.
A green drapery, painted with similar crowns in a darker shade of green, fell in deep, straight folds from the cornice of the periphery, and entirely covered the wall of the lower part of the hall occupied by the assembly. Above this drapery, the wall was white and cold. In this wall, as if hollowed out with a punch, with neither moulding nor foliage were two rows of public tribunes, square at the base and round at the top; according to the rule, for Vitruvius was not dethroned; the archivaults were superimposed on the architraves. There were ten tribunes on each of the long sides of the hall, and at each of the two ends two huge boxes; in all, twenty-four. Into these the multitudes flocked.
The spectators in the lower row of tribunes overflowed on all the gunnels, and formed in groups on all the reliefs of the architecture. A long iron bar, securely fastened breast high, served as a railing for the upper tribunes and protected the spectators from the crowding of the throngs coming up the staircase. Once, however, a man was pushed over into the assembly; he fell a little on Massieu, bishop of Beauvais, and so was not killed, and said: "Well! so a bishop is really good for something!"
The hall of the Convention could hold two thousand people: on days of insurrection, three thousand.
The convention had two sessions, one in the daytime, one in the evening.
The back of the president's chair was round, decorated with gilt nails. His table rested on four winged monsters with a single foot, that seemed to have come out of the
