Let us finish our description of the Assembly Hall. Everything concerning this terrible place is of interest. The first object to attract one's attention on entering was a tall statue of Liberty, placed between two large windows. This hall, which was formerly the king's theatre, had now become the stage of Revolution. It was forty-two metres long, ten metres in width, and eleven in height. This elegant and superb hall built by Vigarani for the use of the courtiers was hidden beneath the rude timber-work which served to support the weight of the people in '93. The only point of support upon which this timber-work of the public tribunes rested, was a single post, which well deserves honorable mention. This post consisted of one solid piece, ten metres in circumference, and few caryatides have done an equal amount of work; for years it bore the severe pressure of revolution. It has supported applause, enthusiasm, insult, clamors and tumults, the tremendous chaos of wrath, the fury of insurrection, and never given way beneath its burden. After the Convention it witnessed the council of the Ancients. On the 18th Brumaire it was relieved. At that time Percier replaced this wooden pillar by columns of marble that did not last so long.
An architect's ideal is sometimes peculiar; that of the architect of the Rue de Rivoli was the curved path of a cannon-ball in its flight; the architect of Carlsruhe conceived the ideal of a fan; and the conception of the architect who built the hall where the Convention established itself on the 10th of May, 1793, was apparently a huge bureau drawer, for it was long as well as high and flat. A great semicircle had been added to one of the long sides of the parallelogram; this was the amphitheatre with seats for the representatives, but neither tables nor desks; Garan-Coulon, who wrote a great deal, used to write, resting his paper on his knee; facing the benches was the tribune,—before it the bust of Lepelletier-Saint-Fargeau, and behind it the president's arm-chair. The head of the bust projected slightly above the edge of the tribune, which afterwards was the cause of its removal.
The amphitheatre consisted of nineteen semicircular benches, rising one above the other, some of which had been lengthened in order to fit into the corners, by means of other benches cut off for the purpose.
In the semicircle beneath, at the foot of the tribunal, were the places of the ushers, and on the other side of the tribune hung a placard nine feet high, set in a black wooden frame, and bearing on its two pages, separated by a kind of sceptre, the Declaration of the rights of man. On the other side was an empty space which was afterwards occupied by a similar frame, containing the Constitution of the year II., with the two pages separated by a sword. Above the tribune, over the head of the orator, from a deep loge divided into two compartments and filled with People, floated three immense tricolored banners, arranged in a horizontal position, resting on an altar upon which could be read the following words: "The Law." Behind this altar rose, like the sentinel of freedom of speech, an enormous Roman fasces as tall as a column. Two colossal statues, placed erect against the wall, faced the representatives,—Lycurgus on the president's right hand, Solon on his left, with Plato towering above the Mountain. The statues stood on simple wooden blocks, resting on a long projecting cornice that encircled the hall, separating the people from the Assembly. The spectators leaned their elbows on this cornice.
The black wooden frame enclosing the proclamation of the Rights of Man reached to the cornice, interfering with the symmetry of the entablature,—an infraction of the straight line that made Chabot growl. "It is ugly," he said to Vadier.
The heads of the statues were decorated with wreaths of oak and laurel.
Green curtains, on which similar wreaths were painted in a deeper shade of the same color, fell in heavy folds from the surrounding cornice, draping the entire lower floor of the hall occupied by the Assembly. Above this drapery the wall was white and bare. In this wall, as if carved by a chisel, without moulding or ornament, were two stories of public tribunes, the square ones below, the round ones above; according to the rule-for the influence of Vitruvius was still acknowledge—the archivolts were superimposed upon the architraves. There were ten tribunes on each of the long sides of the hall, and two huge boxes at both ends; twenty-four in all. There sat the assembled crowd.
The spectators in the lower tribunes overflowed their bounds, grouping themselves on every projection along the cornice. A long iron bar, firmly fastened at the point of support, served as a rail to the upper tribunes, and protected the spectators from the pressure of the crowds that ascended the stairs. Once, however, a man who was pitched suddenly into the Assembly below escaped death by falling partly upon Massieu, Bishop of Beauvais; whereupon he exclaimed, "Really, a bishop has his use, then, after all!"
The hall of the Convention was large enough to contain two thousand persons, and on the days of insurrections even three thousand.
The Convention held two sessions,—one during the day and one in the evening.