In the first chapel, on the right as one enters the church, is a pillar bearing an inscription to the memory of the Abbé du Guerry, curé of the Madeleine, a man of remarkable piety and benevolence, who, with other hostages taken by the Communists, was shot on the 24th of May, 1871, in retaliation for the execution of Communist prisoners by the troops of Versailles. The Church of the Madeleine is famous for the eloquence of its preachers, the taste in dress of the fashionable ladies whom these preachers attract, and the excellence of the music. At the organ of the Madeleine a sound musician and a perfect player is always to be found. CHAPTER XIII. PLACE DE LA CONCORDE. Its History--Louis XV.--Fireworks--The Catastrophe in 1770--Place de la Révolution--Louis XVI.--The Directory. The Rue Royale, a continuation of the Boulevard de la Madeleine, leading to the Place de la Concorde, was the scene of some of the most violent outrages on the part of the Communists in May, 1871. Here, as in the neighbouring Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a number of houses were deliberately set on fire, when some thirty persons perished in the flames. It was said, at the time, that the firemen employed to extinguish the conflagration were bribed by members of the Commune to replace the water in their pumps by petroleum. The Place de la Concorde, the finest of the many fine squares and open spaces in Paris, covers an area of 400 yards in length, by 235 yards in width. It is bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Champs Élysées, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli (at right angles with the Rue Royale), and on the east by the Tuileries Gardens. From the centre of the Place may be seen the Madeleine at the further end of the Rue Royale; the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies just across the river, which is here traversed by the Pont de la Concorde; the Louvre on the one hand, and on the other, at the end of the Champs Élysées, the Triumphal Arch (Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile). At night the views from the Place de la Concorde are more striking even than by day; the Avenue of the Champs Élysées, more than a mile in length, leading in a straight line from the Place de la Concorde to the Triumphal Arch, presenting, with its seemingly interminable rows of lamps, a fairy-like spectacle. The history of the Place de la Concorde is quite modern. Its present name dates only from the Revolution; its creation from no further back than the year 1748. Louis XV., called _le bien-aimé_, had fallen ill at Metz, and the people regarding him, after the ruinously extravagant reign of his predecessor, Louis XIV., as a merciful sovereign, hurried in crowds to the churches, imploring heaven for the King's recovery. "What have I done to be thus beloved?" asked the young monarch, with astonishment; and his eyes moistened with tears--"the only ones," says an apparently well-informed historian, "he ever let fall."