It was at the corner of this Rue des Carmes and the Rue des Sept-Voies, not far from Sainte-Geneviève's church, that, at seven o'clock in the evening of the 9th of March 1804, George Cadoudal sprang into the cab that was to take him to the fresh hiding-place which his friends had prepared for him in the house of Caron, the royalist perfumer of the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain. George was narrowly watched, all the Paris police being on the alert. He was recognised, and pursued by the Inspectors of the Prefecture, two of whom pounced on him at the corner of the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince and the Rue de l'Observance. The one he killed with a pistol bullet in his forehead, the second he wounded. Meanwhile, the assembled crowd hindered his flight; and a hatter of the neighbourhood seized the outlaw and dragged him to the Police Station. His calmness and dignity and the wit of his replies disconcerted his adversaries. Reproached with having killed a married detective, the father of a family: "Next time have me arrested by bachelors," he retorted. After he had owned to the dagger found upon him, he was asked if the engraving on the handle were not the English hall-mark. "I cannot say," he replied, "but I can assure you that I have not had it[1] hall-marked in France." [Illustration: THE LUXEMBOURG, ABOUT 1790 _Maréchal, del._ (National Library)] Quite near, is the Luxembourg, both palace and prison, the Luxembourg, where Marie de Medici gave such magnificent fêtes, where Gaston d'Orléans yawned so much, and where the Grande Mademoiselle sulked, sighing for the handsome Lauzun; where also the Count de Provence so cleverly prepared, with Monsieur d'Avaray, his escape from France, on the same evening that Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette made such bad arrangements for the lugubrious journey that was to lead them to Varennes; the Luxembourg, whose courtyard was used as a promenade by such prisoners as the Terror crowded there; the Luxembourg, whence Camille Desmoulins wrote to his Lucile those heartrending letters that still bear the traces of tears; the Luxembourg whither, a few weeks later, Robespierre was brought as a prisoner, and where, "for want of room," Hally, the porter, refused to receive him; the Luxembourg where, after Thermidor, the artist David painted, from, his dungeon, the shady walk in which he could see his children playing at ball; the Luxembourg of Barras, of Bonaparte, of the Directory fêtes; the Luxembourg, too, of Nodier, of Saint-Beuve, of Murger, of Michelet, of the students, of the workers of Bohemia, of the songs of the worthy Nadaud and Mimi Pinson, near to Bullier's and the Lilac Closerie and also to the Observatory and the ill-omened wall "scored with bullets" where Marshal Ney fell. Everywhere, the same mingling of mirth and sorrow, of laughter and blood. The reason is that each street, each cross-road, almost each house has seen some dark procession pass by or some victorious fête celebrated.