Of the Bastille nothing remains except a few stones which formed the substructure of one of the old towers; and these have been carefully removed to the Célestins Quay, along the Seine, where they are visible to-day. In vain, therefore, would any one now seek for a vestige of the sombre fortress over which so many legends hovered. Latude's great shade itself would hardly locate the spot; and yet how full Paris history is of this traditional Bastille, which the people, amazed with their easy victory, could not tire of visiting after the 15th of July 1789. Such was their curiosity and such their eagerness that Soulès, the governor appointed by the Parisian municipality, was compelled to stop the visits, on the curious ground "that such damage had already been done to the fortress by visitors that more than 200,000 livres would be required to repair it." Repair the Bastille! The souvenir manuscripts of Paré tell us the fury excited by this strange pretension in Danton, sergeant of a section of the National Guard, who, with his company, was turned back by the order.
Danton had himself admitted into the presence of the unfortunate Soulès, seized him by the collar and dragged him to the Town Hall; the prohibition was removed; and Citizen Palloy was thenceforth allowed to exploit the celebrated State prison. The stones were "hewn and cut into images of the fortress and dedicated to the various departments and assemblies," or into "commemorative slabs intended to rouse people's courage." Palloy cut up the leads into medals, and made rings with the iron chains; out of the marble he manufactured games of dominoes, and had the delicate thought to offer one of these games to the young Dauphin to inspire him with "the horror of tyranny."
COMMEMORATIVE BALL ON THE RUINS OF THE BASTILLE
Dancing here
From a coloured engraving of the eighteenth century
Balls were held on the site of the Bastille. Wine flowed, fiddles were scraped, and printed calicoes of that period show us the ruins of the old Parisian citadel surmounted with this inscription: "Dancing here."
The huge space left vacant by the demolition had to be filled up. Napoleon I., whose artistic conceptions were sometimes disconcerting, had constructed there, in 1811, by Alavoine, a strange sort of fountain of bizarre appearance: it was a colossal elephant, twenty-four metres high, which spouted water from its trunk. Built temporarily in plaster and mud, the elephant quickly crumbled away under the action of weather and rain; and soon became a lamentable débris surrounded with disjointed planks. The urchins of the district made it the scene of Homeric struggles; but the real familiars were the rats that had made their home inside the structure, so that, when the demolition began, regular battues had to be organised with men and dogs; and, for months, these dreaded rodents infested the terrorised quarter. In 1840, the present column was erected; since then, the genius of Liberty has poised over Paris his airy foot, and Barye's fine lion watches over the repose of the victims of 1830 that are interred within the crypt of the monument.
THE SENS MANSION ABOUT 1835
From a lithograph by Rouargue