In ordinary life the French are a quiet, harmless people, and they are the last in the world whom you would suspect of atrocities; but every revolution in France has been full of horror, whether in past times or in the present. It has been said that you may take the mildest Frenchman in the world, give him a place of authority where his acts will not be called into question, and the chances are great that he will conduct himself in a very savage manner. I do not assert this of my own knowledge, but leave the reader to judge whether the history of the French prisons and French tyranny does not, in some degree at least, corroborate the statement. The day after my arrival in Paris, a friend proposed that we should visit the Bastille. We were talking upon some topic, and I had actually stepped inside the carriage with him and given the order to the driver before it occurred to me that the Bastille did not exist, and had not existed for several scores of years. When I remembered this, and told my companion, he said,— “I came very near selling you. I want to get even on selling myself.” [Sidenote: SEARCHING FOR THE BASTILLE.] Then he told me a story of his experience in searching for the Bastille. Bear in mind that he was an editor, familiar with history (editors of course know everything), and if he had given the subject a moment’s thought it would have occurred to him that there was no Bastille in Paris worth mentioning. Let me tell his story as he told it. “There were three of us who came over in the steamer, landed at Brest, and came to Paris. We arrived here in the evening. We put up at the Grand Hotel, and the next morning started out to ‘do’ the city. The first thing we saw as we stepped out of the hotel door to the Boulevard was an omnibus, on which was the sign ‘_Place de la Bastille_.’ We mounted to the top of this omnibus, and away we rode down the Boulevard. [Sidenote: VERDANT AMERICANS.] “By and by we stopped near a large, open square, with a monument in the centre. The conductor motioned us to get off, and said something which we did not understand, but took to mean that this was the end of his route. Moreover, the omnibus turned round, and we understood pretty well that we must get ashore. I was the only one who could speak French, and I couldn’t speak much of it. As we left the omnibus, I said to the conductor, ‘_Monsieur, où est la Bastille?_’ “The conductor stared at us, smiled, and turned away. Then we stepped on the sidewalk and looked around. Close by us was a ‘_Restaurant de la Bastille_,’ and on the corner we could see the sign of ‘_Place de la Bastille_.’ There was a cake shop close by, and that had a sign which indicated that it was the cake shop ‘_de la Bastille_.’