The Place Louis XV (now de la Concorde), with its setting of pavilions adorned with groups of statuary representing the chief cities of France, was created by Gabriel in 1763-1772 on the site of a dreary, marshy waste used as a depot for marble. The Place was adorned in 1763 with an equestrian statue of Louis XV., elevated on a pedestal which was decorated at the corners by statues of the cardinal virtues. Mordant couplets, two of which we transcribe, affixed on the base, soon expressed the judgment of the Parisians:-- "_O la belle statue! O le beau piédestal!_ _Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval._"[174] "_Il est ici come à Versailles_ _Il est sans coeur et sans entrailles._"[175] After the fall of the monarchy the Place was known as the Place de la Revolution, and in 1792, Louis XV. with the other royal simulacra in bronze having been forged into the cannon that thundered against the allied kings of Europe, a plaster statue of Liberty was erected, at whose side the guillotine mowed down king and queen, revolutionist and aristocrat in one bloody harvest of death, ensanguining the very figure of the goddess herself, who looked on with cold and impassive mien. She too fell, and in her place stood a _fascis_ of eighty-three spears, symbolising the unity of the eighty-three departments of France. In 1795 the Directory changed the name to Place de la Concorde, and again in 1799 a seated statue of Liberty holding a globe was set up. In the hollow globe a pair of wild doves built their nest--a futile augury, for in 1801 Liberty II. was broken in pieces, and the model for a tall granite column erected in its place by Napoleon I. One year passed and this too disappeared. After the Restoration, among the other inanities came, in 1816, a second statue of Louis XV., and the Place resumed its original name. Ten years later an expiatory monument to Louis XVI. was begun, only to be swept away with other Bourbon lumber by the July Revolution of 1830. At length the famous obelisk from Luxor, after many vicissitudes, was elevated in 1836 where it now stands. [Illustration: LANDSCAPE. COROT.]