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48
FRENCH AFFAIRS.

fested in its outer works. I here refer to the famous fossés des Tuileries. These were for a long time the subject of conversation in salons or at street corners, and they are still spoken of with hatred and bitterness. So long as the hoarding of high boards hid the garden front of the Tuileries from public sight, the most absurd fancies obtained currency regarding what was being done. The majority thought that the King wished to fortify the castle, and that on the garden side, where the mob once entered so easily on the 10th of August, and it was even said that with this view the Pont Royal was to be destroyed. Others thought that the King would only build a long wall to hide from his sight the view of the Place de la Concorde, not from childish fear, but tender feeling, for his father died in the Place de la Grève, but the Place de la Concorde was the ground of execution for the elder line.[1] However, a wrong was done to poor Louis Philippe here, as so often elsewhere.


    king is here very ingeniously introduced. As regards these visions, all of Heine's on dits and wie man sagt must be taken with the utmost suspicion or absolute distrust. He was never so happy as when retailing the sorriest and flimsiest gossip from the lowest sources, and, as in the case of W. A. von Schlegel and Platen, he brought it forward seriously in grave writing as absolutely established fact.—Translator.

  1. The preceding sentence is omitted in the French version.—Translator.