If good materials and excellent workmanship can make a building interesting, assuredly the Madeleine ought to be so. Commenced in 1764 as a church, its fate was somewhat similar to that of S. Geneviève, for, in 1806, Napoleon, then busy in Posen, sent his orders that it should be finished as a Temple of Glory. The pediment was to bear the following inscription:--"L'empereur Napoléon aux soldats de la grande armée;" and the 5th article of the decree was thus composed: "Tous les ans, aux anniversaires des batailles d'Austerlitz et d'Iéna, le monument sera illuminé, et il y sera donné un concert précédé d'un discours sur les vertus necessaires au soldat, et d'un éloge de ceux qui périrent sur le champ de bataille dans ces journées memorables.... Dans les discours et odes, il est expressément défendu de faire mention de l'empereur." Pierre Vignon carried on the work, and the building grew into a magnificent temple, planned upon the Maison Carrée of Nismes. The results of Waterloo turned it again church ways, but it was not finished until 1842. The bronze doors are perhaps the best work of Baron de Triqueti; and the group of the Magdalen over the altar may be no more mundane and meretricious than is usual in Marochetti's performances. The picture in the vault over the altar is a jumble by Ziegler of sacred and secular personages, from the Magdalen and her Master down to Napoleon the arrogant. It is supposed to be an allegory of the history of Christianity, which Clovis introduced to France, and Napoleon patted on the back by means of the Concordat. The most important position in the picture is occupied by the last-named brigand--the poor Pope even being in a secondary place, somewhat inferior to the imperial eagle. The group in the baptistry is by Rude; the one opposite, in a chapel dedicated to marriage, by Pradier. It was in the Madeleine that some of the Communards were massacred in 1871. At the end of the struggle, about 300 of them were driven into the church; and there, before the altar where their victim, the abbé Duguerry had officiated, they were mown down in terrible retribution, with no more mercy shown them than they had accorded to the hostages.