with one accord into the noisome cloud, fighting and quarrelling for bits of bronze and stone, and a man near me drew back, half stifled for an instant, saying, with disgust, "See what a stench the Empire has!" The statue had fallen beyond the heap, and, having smashed the pavement into splinters, lay a wreck, with one arm broken and the head severed from the body, while women kicked and spat upon it, waving their arms wildly, and shouting, "_Vive la Republique!_" "_Vive la Commune!_" All the bands struck on the _Marseillaise_ in different keys, a few people crowded on the remnants of the pedestal waving red flags and shrieking in their excitement, and a sergeant who endeavoured to unburden himself of an oration was speedily gagged and hustled down to make way for the great "Bergeret _lui-meme_," who, in all the glory of a red scarf and tassels, waved his hat and struggled to be heard above the general hubbud of music, voices, and battering of bronze. "Citizens," he said, "the 26th of Floreal will be memorable in our history. Thus we triumph over military despotism, that bloody negation of the rights of man. The First Empire placed the collar of servitude about our necks--it began and ended in carnage--and left us a legacy of a Second Empire, which was finally to end in the disgrace of Sedan." Much more he said, but his voice was drowned in the continued hammering of metal, while our attention was distracted by peremptory orders to "move on." Such an order at such a moment was particularly exasperating, and led to many little tussles with citizens, who refused to consider this a pleasant opening to the era of liberty, an exasperation very considerably increased at the different exits from the square by an uncompromising search into the contents of pockets, and a consequent disgorging of trophies and remembrances. A fight was going on meantime in the Rue de la Paix between a company of Marines and the multitude of people gathered in the street, who struggled and fought with an energy worthy of a better cause in hopes of gaining a share in the spoils. As I emerged from the conflict into the comparative peace and coolness of the Boulevard, I was stopped by a procession--two battalions of National Guards returning much shorn of numbers, from the Bois de Boulogne, bringing with them in a furniture waggon a portion of their dead, among whom was their colonel, whose feet projected from under the flapping awning of the cart. An order of the day of Marshal Mac-Mahon has been published in which he announces the demolition of the Vendome Column. He says:--