In 1792 the Tuileries had upon the Carrousel side, toward the palace of the Louvre, three smaller yards, walled and preserving its entrances from the public of the city. Beyond these again, and filling all the main Carrousel court of the Louvre, was a crowd of houses pierced by tortuous lanes, and in the midst of them a little chapel to St. Thomas of Canterbury. This mass of houses within the arms of the palace was, as it were, a little overflow of the town into the midst of the Louvre and its connected Tuileries. Through this built and crowded space traffic passed and repassed between the Rue St. Honoré, to the north of the Louvre, and the river, running along its southern side. For under the Long Gallery of the Louvre, the only completed side of the great Carrousel court, arches were pierced, giving access to the quays. Behind the Tuileries to the west the gardens, which are now open to the town and form a part of it, were then private to the king. Overlooking [Illustration: THE STORMING OF THE TUILERIES _To face p. 94_ ] them from the north, the great oval of the royal riding-school looked with its tall, mournful windows, and therein, upon benches roughly provided for the passing circumstance, sat the congress of the Revolution. Therein were heard the declamations that hurried on the storm, and in these hot days, when the western casements of the palace stood open at morning, the court within could hear the distant noise of the debates. That court, with the heavy, lethargic king in the midst of it, still governed in this end of July, 1792. He was still the executive; from him and from those rooms there still proceeded all orders to the armies, all communications with the powers of Europe. A great pomp still surrounded these last hours of the French monarchy. Its ceremonial was still exactly preserved amid the gold, the heavy hangings, and all the splendour of the Bourbons. So long as that centre stood and governed, so long as it betrayed (for it was certainly betraying) the nation in arms, that nation and the great experiment upon which it had embarked were in peril or doomed. For from the Tuileries could go out not only open orders that presumed the defence of the frontiers and resistance to the coming invasion, but secret letters also, very contradictory of these; and one such had gone out in those very days to the peril of the French people. The queen’s letter was an appeal for a proclamation to be issued by the invaders, a manifesto threatening with military execution whatever men or cities might either arrest the foreign armies or insult the shaken and tottering throne of her husband.