The Temple tower is no longer in existence. Bonaparte visited it when he was Consul. "There are {349} too many souvenirs in that prison," he exclaimed. "I will tear it down." In 1811 he kept his promise. The palace of the grand-prior was destroyed in 1853. No trace remains of that famous enclosure of the Templars whose legend has so sombre a poetry. But it has left an impress on the imagination of peoples which will never be effaced. It seems to rise again gigantic, that tower where the son of Saint Louis realized not alone the type of the antique sage of whom Horace said: _Impavidum ferient ruinae_, but also the purest ideal of the true Christian. Does not the name Temple seem predestinated for a spot which was to be sanctified by so many virtues, and where the martyr King put in practice these verses of the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_, his favorite book: "It needs no great virtue to live peaceably with those who are upright and amiable; one is naturally pleased in such society; we always love those whose sentiments agree with ours. But it is very praiseworthy, and the effect of a special grace and great courage to live in peace with severe and wicked men, who are disorderly, or who contradict us.... He who knows best how to suffer, will enjoy the greatest peace; such a one is the conqueror of himself, master of the world, the friend of Jesus Christ, and the inheritor of heaven." {350} XXXIV. THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE'S MURDER. The Princess de Lamballe, after being taken from the Temple in the night of August 18-19, had been examined by Billaud-Varennes at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and then sent, at noon, August 19, to the Force. This prison, divided into two distinct parts, the great and the little Force, was situated between the rues Roi-de-Sicile, Culture, and Pavée. In 1792 it supplemented the Abbey and Châtelet prisons, which were overcrowded. The little Force had a separate entry on the rue Pavée to the Marais, while the door of the large one opened on the rue des Ballets, a few steps from the rue Saint-Antoine. The register of the little Force, which is preserved in the archives of the prefecture of police, records that, at the time of the September massacres, this prison in which the Princess de Lamballe was immured, contained one hundred and ten women, most of them not concerned with political affairs, and in great part women of the town. Here, from August 19 to September 3, the Princess suffered inexpressible anguish. She never heard a turnkey open the door of her cell without thinking that her last hour had come. {351}