Place du Carrousel

“ That leaves a sleeper to his sleep.
He left the room on pointed feet;
Smiling that things had gone so well.
They hanged him in Meridian Street.
You pray in vain for Carrousel.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ No description can give any idea of what the Carrousel Square was then, in the intermediate state to which it was condemned, after the First Empire, by the joining of the Louvre to the Tuileries, which joining was still unachieved, though always being planned and replanned. It was [Pg xxxix] nothing but a medley of half-destroyed streets, isolated houses half pulled-down and shored up with beams. The unpaved, uneven, broken ground was a veritable bog in rainy weather. The great gallery of the Louvre was flanked with an ugly wooden corridor, for ever ready to flare up! ”

“ But of all Glass-coaches, we recommend this to thee, O Reader, which stands drawn up, in the Rue de l’Echelle, hard by the Carrousel and outgate of the Tuileries; in the Rue de l’Echelle that then was; “opposite Ronsin the saddler’s door,” as if waiting for a fare there! Not long does it wait: a hooded Dame, with two hooded Children has issued from Villequier’s door, where no sentry walks, into the Tuileries Court-of-Princes; into the Carrousel; into the Rue de l’Echelle; where the Glass-coachman readily admits them; and again waits. Not long ”

“ All this I saw from the open window of the Warden's breakfast-saloon, looking across the shoulder of the Lord Chancellor, who had sprung to his feet the moment the shouting began, almost as if he had been expecting it, and had rushed to the window which commanded the best view of the market-place.
"What can it all mean?" he kept repeating to himself, as, with his hands clasped behind him, and his gown floating in the air, he paced rapidly up and down the room. "I never heard such shouting before—and at this time of the morning, too! And with such unanimity! ”

“ Fifth Avenue was gay with illumination and the prancing of horses returning uptown or down to the Washington Square district. In contrast the side street, with its austere rows of brownstone houses, each with its area and flight of steps, its spaced gas lamps, its deserted roadway, seemed very still and quiet. Carroll was in a tired and pensive mood. She held her head back, breathing deeply.
“It's only a little strip, but it's the stars,” said she, looking up to the sky between the houses. “They're so quiet and calm and big.”
She seemed to Orde for the first time like a little girl. ”

“ The rear of the palace looked out upon a parterre; beyond the parterre lay a chaos from which the Carrousel was not wholly delivered until the Second Empire. There stood the famous Hôtel de Rambouillet, close to the hotel of Madame de Chevreuse, confidential friend of Anne of Austria and interested enemy of Richelieu. There were other hotels, entangled with churches, with a hospital, a "Court of Miracles," gardens, and wild lands overgrown with weeds and grasses. There were shops and stables; and away at the far end of the settlement stood the Louvre, closing the perspective. ”

“ Altogether Carcassonne was a place of artistic achievement.
The city, as we wended our way towards it, grew more and more dazzling to the sense of reality. That progress through the lower town, across the Aude, was like walking straight into the background of a mediæval painting—and who has not longed for that excursion? There was not a sight or a sound to mar the perfection of the place. Doubtless in the old days there would have been more stir as one approached the great double-towered gateway and crossed the bridge over what was once a moat. ”

“ Like a rival shop, on the invidious side of a street, it has "no connection" with the establishment across the way, although the two places are united (if old Carcassonne may be said to be united to anything) by a vague little rustic faubourg. Perched on its solid pedestal, the perfect detachment of the Cite is what first strikes you. To take leave, without delay, of the ville-basse, I may say that the splendid acacias I have mentioned flung a summerish dusk over the place, in which a few scattered remains of stout walls and big bastions looked venerable and picturesque. ”

“ The roaring of voices in the Carrousel beyond the walls of the courtyard increased continually; the outer noise of the sea of Paris rose with it every moment, and on the first floor, where the Royal Family and some few advisers sat, all this gathering crowd outside the courtyard walls was watched by those who were responsible for the unity of the nation in face of the advancing invasion, and for the person of what was still the King. ”

“ As my humble carriage slackened its pace to a walk on approaching the Place Carousel, I for the first time perceived that the open space around was thronged with equipages, moving slowly along in line towards the gate of the Palace. A picket of dragoons was drawn up at the great archway, and mounted gendarmes rode up and down to preserve order in the crowd. Before me stretched the long facade of the Tuileries, now lighted up in its entire extent; the rich hangings and costly furniture could be seen even where I was. ”

“ Of the then very famous "Berlin Carrousel of 1750" we propose to say little; the now chief interesting point in it being that M. de Voltaire is curiously visible to us there. But the truth is, they were very great days at Berlin, those of Autumn, 1750; distinguished strangers come or coming; the King giving himself up to entertainment of them, to enjoyment of them; with such a hearty outburst of magnificence, this Carrousel the apex of it, as was rare in his reign. There were his Sisters of Schwedt and Baireuth, with suite, his dear Wilhelmina queen of the scene ”

“ The mantel, carved in delicate wreaths, is boarded up, and an unsightly stove mocks the gilded ceiling. Children romp in that room with the silver door-knobs, where my master and his lady were wont to sit at cards in silk and brocade, while liveried blacks entered on tiptoe. No marble Cupids or tall Dianas fill the niches in the staircase, and the mahogany board, round which has been gathered many a famous toast and wit, is gone from the dining room.
But Mr. Carvel's town house in Annapolis stands to-day, with its neighbours, a mournful relic of a glory that is past. ”

“ The apartment in which the king's library is kept is handsome, but not sufficiently so, and is in the midst of other buildings: if a fire should happen, a risk is incurred of an irreparable loss. When the building, now in construction, opposite to the Museum of the Louvre, shall be completed, and the Place du Carousel shall form one vast quadrangle, it is to be hoped that this building will contain a gallery, like that of the paintings, in which may be deposited this superb and useful collection of books. ”

“ The very Firemen, who pump and labour on that smoking Carrousel, are shot at; why should the Carrousel not burn? Some Swiss take refuge in private houses; find that mercy too does still dwell in the heart of man. The brave Marseillese are merciful, late so wroth; and labour to save. Journalist Gorsas pleads hard with enfuriated groups. Clemence, the Wine-merchant, stumbles forward to the Bar of the Assembly, a rescued Swiss in his hand ”

“ She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a little timid about going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: ‘for I certainly won’t go back,’ she thought to herself, and this was the only way to the Eighth Square. ”

“ Mrs. Carwell, who had no suspicion at the moment, that he was not a real person, and fancied that he was some one employed in cording the Judge's luggage, called to know what he was doing there.
Instead of answering, he turned about, and walked across the lobby, at about the same leisurely pace at which she was ascending, and entered a room, into which she followed him. It was an uncarpeted and unfurnished chamber. An open trunk lay upon the floor empty, and beside it the coil of rope; but except herself there her. ”

“ For there is, and was, one more strange custom in this strange city; at the sunset hour the young ladies of Carácas, all in their gayest dresses, sit in the great open windows and look upon the street—a curious sight it is to see the bright eyes and white throats thrust, like birds from a cage, through the iron bars of the sombre stone windows. (For no wind or cold ever needs a window of glass in that perpetual perfect weather; the high sun never makes a shutter needful in the narrow streets.) ”

“ The exhalations from the dirt-heaps, the foulness of every house, the general condition of tumble-down, compose a something to make a sanitary officer's hair stand on end. But it is very wonderful. Carcassonne is marvellous, but this is Carcassonne seen through a diminishing glass.
Trets has an ancient church, but that has a tower in ruins, and it is a marvel to the visitor how that the rain does not enter and souse the interior and congregation, so dilapidated is the whole structure. In the basement of the tower is a white marble sculptured Roman sarcophagus ”

“ She had got all the pegs put in by this time, and Alice looked on with great interest as she returned to the tree, and then began slowly walking down the row.
At the two-yard peg she faced round, and said, “A pawn goes two squares in its first move, you know. So you’ll go very quickly through the Third Square—by railway, I should think—and you’ll find yourself in the Fourth Square in no time. Well, that square belongs to Tweedledum and Tweedledee—the Fifth is mostly water—the Sixth belongs to Humpty Dumpty—But you make no remark?” ”

“ CITY OF CARCASSONNE. GATE-HOUSE OF THE CASTLE
During the twelfth, and more especially the thirteenth century, the gates were the points most strongly fortified. They were approached over a [310] bridge, by raising a movable portion of which, however, entrance might be barred on the very threshold. The narrow gateway passage was defended by two projecting towers pierced with loopholes, and connected by a curtain. The whole structure formed a fortified gate-house, known as a châtelet, which had to be carried before an assailant could penetrate to the fortress beyond. ”

“ Consequently they varied the shapes of their towers, they capped them quaintly, hardly making two alike. Here, at Carcassonne, every tower, or nearly every tower, resembles its fellow, and all have sugar-loaf caps that irritate the eye with iteration of the same form. The citadel has no character of massiveness, no grand donjon to distinguish it from the rest of the fortifications, and the cathedral has only two mean little donkey's ears of towers that are most ineffective, peeping over the walls of the south-western angle of the town. ”

“ Mistress Dolly was then as mischievous a little baggage as ever she proved afterwards. She was coming to pass a week at the Hall, her parents, whose place was next to ours, having gone to Philadelphia on a visit. We rounded Kent Island, which lay green and beautiful in the flashing waters, and at length caught sight of the old windmill, with its great arms majestically turning, and the cupola of Carvel House shining white among the trees; and of the upper spars of the shipping, with sails neatly furled, lying at the long wharves, where the English wares Mr. ”

“ Honored by his countrymen, blessed with the wealth giving him every material comfort and luxury, owning his town house, his estate of Doughoregan, and his plantation the famous Carrollton, sought out by the most distinguished men and women at home and from abroad, to say nothing of the myriad resources which such a man as Carroll possessed within himself, he already saw his family—the third generation born in America—well established, with the roof-trees of his son and daughters close by his own. ”

“ I was keeping up at that time five fires (or smokes) besides the one in the hotel, to wit: one in the harness shop and one in Joyce’s, both at the north end of the street and opposite each other; one in the bank; one in Townsend’s store at the south end of the street on the west side, and one in the depot out across the square in front of the south end of the street. There was a chance for a good tunnel to all of these except to the depot; here the northwest wind had swept across the square and the ground in some places was almost bare. ”

“ We’ll have to fight the fire from the outside. I’m afraid we can’t do much. It seems to have gained a good deal of headway in a very short time. I am going to ask you to stand in the corridor, Miss Carroll, while I go outside. As the girls come downstairs with the buckets, count them. Send them out doors and to the rear of the dormitory. ”

“ Equally unperceived by her, Arthur slightly raised his shoulders, and spread his hands abroad, as who should say “What else can I say to her?” and moved away, leaving her to discuss her strawberries by ‘involution,’ or any other way she preferred.
By this time the carriages, that were to convey the revelers to their respective homes, had begun to assemble outside the Castle-grounds: and it became evident—now that Lady Muriel’s cousin had joined our party—that the problem, how to convey five people to Elveston, with a carriage that would only hold four, must somehow be solved. ”

“ Out in the stable, beside the great door through which was a view of the early autumn landscape—a cluster of golden trailing elms, with one rosy maple on a green lawn intersected by the broad sweep of drive—sat the man in a chair, and whittled with a face as imperturbable as fate. Carroll stood beside him, talking in a low tone. ”