Louis XV. recovered and came back to Paris; and it was then that the Town Council voted with enthusiasm an equestrian statue to the sovereign whom it had pleased heaven to spare. The King, on his side, presented to the city a large open piece of ground at the end of the Tuileries Gardens, and in the centre of this plain the first stone was laid of the monument which was to celebrate the virtues of Louis the Well-beloved. This statue, according to the fashion of the time, represented the King in Roman costume with a crown of laurels on his head; and, among other devices, personifications of Strength, Wisdom, Justice, and Peace were made to figure at the corners of the pedestal, which gave rise to the following epigram:-- "Oh! la belle statue! oh! le beau piédestal! Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval;" which may be thus turned into English:-- "Fit statue, fitter pedestal! with laughter burst your sides, The virtues all below on foot, while vice triumphant rides!" Another satirist wrote:-- "Il est ici comme à Versailles; Il est sans coeur et sans entrailles." or, to give something like an equivalent in English:-- "Here have set up the builders with their trowels A King of brass who's neither heart nor bowels." A philosopher who seems to have foreseen what he fancied was by no means apparent to Louis XV.--that the ancient _régime_ was coming to an end--placed a bandage round the eyes of the statue with these words inscribed on it:-- "Have pity on a poor blind man!" This, however, is inconsistent with the tradition which attributes to him the saying, more generally believed to have been Metternich's, "Après moi le déluge!" [Illustration: THE MADELEINE.] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MADELEINE.]