or, to give something like an equivalent in English:—
“Here have set up the builders with their trowels
A King of brass who’s neither heart nor bowels.”
A philosopher who seems to have foreseen what he fancied was by no means apparent to Louis XV.—that the ancient régime was coming to an end—placed a bandage round the eyes of the statue with these words inscribed on it:—
“Have pity on a poor blind man!”
This, however, is inconsistent with the tradition which attributes to him the saying, more generally believed to have been Metternich’s, “Après moi le déluge!”
The open space was now to be marked in by ornamental limits; and the architects were working at the railings and walls, when, on the night of the 30th of May, 1770, a frightful catastrophe took place. To celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI., with the Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, the town of Paris had prepared a magnificent fête, of which the principal attraction was to be a display of fireworks under the direction of the famous Italian pyrotechnist, Ruggieri, perfecter of an art first introduced into France (like so many others) by his ingenious countrymen. Three centuries earlier, in 1465, it should be said, when fireworks were for the first time seen in France, much excitement and some accidents, though no fatal ones, were in like manner caused. After the battle of Montléhry, when the troops of Louis XI. retired to Corbeil, and the great noblemen who had been leagued against him to Étampes, the Duke of Berri and the Comte de Charolais took their places at the window of a house in the last-named town and looked out together on the soldiers and the mob who filled the streets. Suddenly a dart of fire was seen flashing and curling in the air, which, taking the direction of the window where the prince and the count were seated, struck against it with a violent explosion. The two noblemen were filled with alarm, and the Comte de {145} Charolais in his fright ordered the Seigneur Contay to call out all the troops of the household, the archers of his body-guard, and others. The Duke of Berri gave like orders to all the troops under his command; and in a few minutes two or three bodies of armed men, with a great number of archers, were seen in front of the residence, making every endeavour to find out whence the marvellous and terrible apparition of fire could have proceeded. It was regarded as a diabolical device magically directed against the persons of the Comte de Charolais and the Duke of Berri. After close investigation it was discovered that the author of the marvel productive of so much alarm was a Breton known as {146} Jean Boute-Feu, otherwise Jean des Serpents, so called from his having invented the kind of firework which still bears the name of “serpent.” Jean threw himself at the feet of the princes, confessed to them that he had indeed fired rockets into the air, but added that his intention had been to amuse, not injure, them. Then, to prove that his fireworks were harmless, he let off three or four of them in presence of the princes, which quite destroyed the suspicions formed against him. Everyone now began to laugh. Much trepidation had meanwhile been caused by a very trifling incident.
But let us return to the year 1770 and the fête on the Place Louis XV. All was going well, when suddenly a gust of wind blew down among the crowd some rockets only partially exploded. Fireworks, like so many inventions of Italian origin, were still, to the mass of the French public, a comparative novelty; and this, together with the positive inconvenience and even danger of a fall of blazing missiles in the midst of thousands of excited and closely-packed spectators, was quite enough to account for the terrible confusion, resulting in many hundreds of fatal accidents, which now ensued.