“I, King of the French, swear to the nation to employ all the power which has been delegated to me by constitutional law, in maintaining the constitution and executing the laws.” Ah, King, King! it is with greater heart and better faith that your people have sworn. The Queen did not swear; she sat in a reserved seat, with the Dauphin and the princesses. On hearing the King’s voice trembling and hesitating she smiled, a singular light gleaming in her eyes the while. M. Drouet, as well as myself, remarked that smile, and he frowned. “Ah, M. Drouet,” said I, “I like not that smile! And I never could have believed that that beautiful Queen could have smiled in such a fashion.” “The Queen’s smile matters little,” replied M. Drouet. “The King has sworn—that is the great point. The oath is registered at this moment in the hearts of twenty-five millions of Frenchmen. It will be worse for him if the oath be not kept.” * * * * * Every time that I have been to Paris since that day, I have paid a visit to the Champ de Mars, the only monument left of the Revolution. The last time I made the pilgrimage was in 1853. I had come to buy the History of the French Revolution, by Michelet. I seated myself on a hillock, and much in the same way as M. Chateaubriand on the ruins of Sparta, cried out in a loud voice, three times, “Leonidas! Leonidas! Leonidas!” I read aloud the following lines of the eloquent historian, which chimed in so well with my own thoughts:— “The Champ de Mars is the sole monument left of the Revolution. The Empire has the Arc de Triomphe. Royalty has its Louvre and its Invalides. The feudal Church of 1,200 has its throne in Notre Dame. “But the Revolution has alone for its monument an empty space. “This monument is sand, and desert as the plains of Arabia. A mound to the right, a mound to the left, like those which the Gauls erected in memory of their fallen heroes. “Though the plain be dry, and the grass be withered, still a day will come when it shall be again clothed in green. “For mingled with this earth is the sweat of the brow of those who on a sacred day raised these hills—on a day when, awakened by the cannon of the Bastille, France poured in from the north and south—on a day when three millions as one man swore eternal peace. “Ah! poor Revolution, so confiding in the first blush of thy youth, thou hast invited the world to love and peace. “Oh, my enemies! said’st thou, there are no longer enemies. “Thou heldest out thine hand to all—thou hast offered the cup to drink to the peace of nations, but they would not.” CHAPTER XX. I GO BACK AGAIN. We arranged to leave Paris on the following morning. It was three hours after noontide when the ceremony was over. I made a rendezvous with M. Drouet for five o’clock at the “Hotel des Postes,” and left him to give my thanks and bid adieu to Maître Duplay and his family. All the household had been to the fête of the federation.