The interior is in keeping with the exterior. The noble pile is a fit repository for what it contains. The one hundred and forty salons into which the Louvre is divided are marvels of artistic beauty. Intended for the abode of royalty, it was royally constructed. The kingly builders did not spare the sweat or blood of their subjects. They set out to have a royal palais, and they did not allow the miseries of a few millions of their people to stand in the way of its achievement. The most beautiful of them all is the Galerie d'Apollon, the ornamentation of which, in beauty of design and skill in execution, is marvelous. It is of itself a study. The vaulted ceiling is filled with paintings by Le Brun, one of the greatest of the French masters. The cornices and corners are ornamented with beautiful designs in gilt, elaborately wrought, and on the walls are portraits of French artists in gobelin tapestry, making it one of the finest collections of this kind of work extant. There is a perfection in the drawing that is remarkable, and the coloring is exquisite, the various shades and tints blending with a nicety that makes one almost feel that they were done by artists with brush and paint. Tapestry, as a rule, has small degree of expression in face and feature, but in these every feature is faithfully reproduced, and the whole figure is strikingly life-like. This room has a history. It was originally built by Henry IV., and was burned in 1661. During the reign of Louis XIV. the work of reconstruction was begun, Le Brun furnishing the designs. His death in 1690 put a stop to the work, and for a century and a half it stood in an unfinished condition. In 1848 work was resumed, and in three years it was finished as it now stands. There are scores of other rooms of quite as much interest. In all, the frescoes and wall paintings are incomparable, and though the galleries aggregate over a mile and a half in length, in no place is there a barren spot. The great masters, through all these ages, gave to it their best years and their best work, and so long as the Louvre remains these rooms will be monuments of their genius. [Sidenote: THE REASON FOR THE COMMUNE.] The Louvre is inseparable from the history of France. In all the upheavals, the tearings down and overturnings, it has been a central figure. It was from the Louvre on that dreadful night in August, 1572, that Charles IX. fired the shot that was the signal for the horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew, which ended in the indiscriminate slaughter of the Huguenots, and from that time on to the present it has been the stage on which tragedies have been enacted. It figured in the terrible days of the Commune, in 1871, and but for an almost Providential interference, would have passed into history as a memory.