202 



BAILLY. 



have not abandoned their standards." There were finally 

 six hundred Swiss Guards in Paris, deserters from their 

 regiments ; for, let us speak freely, the celebrated monu- 

 ment of Lucerne will not prevent the Swiss themselves 

 from being recognized by impartial and intelligent histo- 

 rians, as having experienced the revolutionary fever. 



Those who, with such poor means of repression, flat- 

 tered themselves that they could entirely prevent any 

 disorder, in a town of seven or eight hundred thousand 

 inhabitants in exasperation, must have been very blind. 

 Those, on the other hand, who attempt to throw the re- 

 sponsibility of the disorders on Bailly, would prove by 

 this alone, that good people should always keep aloof 

 from public affairs during a revolution. 



The administrator, a being of modern creation, now 

 declares, with the most ludicrous self-sufficiency, that 

 Bailly was not equal to the functions of a Mayor of Paris. 

 It is, he says, by undeserved favour that his statue has 

 been placed on the facade of the Hotel de Ville. During 

 his magistracy, Bailly did not create any large square in 

 the capital, he did not open out any large streets, he ele- 

 vated no splendid monument ; Bailly would therefore 

 have done better had he remained an astronomer or eru- 

 dite scholar. 



The enumeration of all the public erections that Bailly 

 did not execute is correct. It might also have been 

 added, that far from devoting the municipal funds to 

 building, he had the vast and threatening castle of the 

 Bastille demolished down to its very foundations ; but 

 this would not deprive Bailly of the honour of having 

 been one of the most enlightened magistrates that the 

 city of Paris could boast. 



Bailly did not enlarge any street, did not erect any 



