were really terrifying.” For still greater security all the adjoining buildings which crowded round the tower were thrown down. This work of destruction was entrusted to Palloy, a zealous patriot, whose energy in helping to pull down the Bastile pointed him out as a fit instrument for the occasion. These external arrangements fitly symbolized the systematic brutality which was organized from the first by the Convention, and relentlessly carried out by its agents on each succeeding victim, but by no one so ferociously as Simon the shoemaker. The most appalling riddle which the world has yet set us to solve is the riddle of the French Revolution. The deepest thinkers, the shrewdest philosophers, are puzzling over it still, and will go on puzzling to the crack of doom. There are causes many and terrible which explain the grand fact of the nation’s revolt itself; why, when once the frenzy broke out, the people murdered the king, and butchered all belonging to him, striving to bring about a new birth, a different order of things, by a baptism of blood, the death and annihilation of the old system--many wise and solemn words have been uttered concerning these things, many answers which, if they do not justify the madness of the Revolution, help us to pity, and in a measure excuse, its actors; but the enigma which no one has ever yet solved, or attempted to solve, is the excess of cruelty practised on the fair-haired child whose sole crime was his misfortune in being the descendant of the kings of France. The Princesse de Lamballe fell on the 3d of September at the prison of La Force. The National Guards carried the head on a pike through the city, and then hoisted it under the windows of the king, and clamored for him to come out and show himself. One young officer, more humane than his compeers, rushed forward and prevented it, and saved Louis from beholding the dreadful spectacle. The king was deeply grateful for the kind action, and asked the officer’s name. “And who was the other who tried to force your majesty out?” enquired M. de Malesherbes. “Oh! I did not care to know his name!” replied Louis gently. That was a night of horrors. The two princesses, Mme. Royale and Princess Elizabeth, could not sleep; the drums were beating to arms, and they sat in silence, “listening to the sobs of the queen, which never ceased.” But more cruel days were yet in store. Before the month was out the Commune de Paris issued a decree for the separation of the king from his wife and children. “They felt it,” says this curious document, “their imperious duty to prevent the abuses which might facilitate the evasion of those traitors, and therefore decree, 1st, that Louis and Antoinette be separated. “2d. That each shall have a separate dungeon (_cachot_). “3d. That the _valet de chambre_ be placed in confinement, etc., etc.”