: Alvira: The Heroine of Vesuvius by O Reilly A J Augustine J - Christian saints; Women and religion

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Paris One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago.

"Paris is on fire!" "The Tuileries burnt!" "The Hotel de Ville in ashes!" There are few who do not remember how the world was electrified with the telegrams that a few years ago announced the destruction of the French capital. It was the tragic finale of a disastrous war between rival nations; yet the flames were not sent on high to the neutral heavens to be the beacon of triumph and revenge of a conquering army, but set on fire by its own people, who, in a fanaticism unequalled in the history of nations would see their beautiful city a heap of ashes rather than a flourishing capital in the power of its rightful rulers. Fast were the devouring elements leaping through the palaces and superb public buildings of the city; the petroleum flames were ascending from basement to roof; streets were in sheets of fire; the charred beams were breaking; the walls fell with thundering crash--the empress city was indeed on fire. Like the winds unchained by the storm-god, the passions of men marked their accursed sweep over the fairest city of Europe in torrents of human blood and the wreck of material grandeur.

Those who have visited the superb queen of cities as she once flourished in our days could not, even in imagination, grasp the contrast between Paris of the present and the Paris of two hundred years ago. With a power more destructive than the petroleum of the Commune, we must, in though, sweep away the Tuileries, the boulevards, the Opera-House and superb buildings that surround the Champs Elysees; on their sites we must build old, tottering, ill-shaped houses, six and seven stories high, confining narrow and dirty streets that wind in lanes and alleys into serpentine labyrinths, reeking with filthy odors and noxious vapors. Fill those narrow streets with a lazy, ill-clad people--men in short skirts and clogs, squatting on the steps of antiquated cafes, smoking canes steeped in opium, awaiting the beck of some political firebrand to tear each other to pieces--and in this description you place before the mind's eye the city some writers have painted as the Paris of two hundred years ago.

But the old city has passed away. Like the fabulous creations we have read of in the tales of childhood, palaces, temples, boulevards, and theatres have sprung up on the site of the antiquated and labyrinthine city. Under the dynasty of the Napoleons the capital was rebuilt with lavish magnificence. Accustomed to gaze on the splendor of the sun, we seldom advert to its real magnificence in our universe; but pour its golden flood on the sightless eyeball, and all language would fail to tell the impression upon the paralyzed soul. Thus, in a minor degree, the emigrant from the southern seas who has been for years amongst the cabins on the outskirts of uncultivated plains, where cities were built of huts, where spireless churches of thatched roof served for the basilicas of divine worship, and where public justice was administered under canvas, is startled and delighted with the refinement and civilization of his more favored fellow-mortal who lives in the French capital.

Paris has been rudely disfigured in the fury of her Communist storm; yet, in the invincible energy of the French character, the people who paid to the conquering nation in fifteen months nine milliards of francs will restore the broken ornaments of the empress city. From the smoking walls and unsightly ruins of bureaux and palaces that wring a tear from the patriot, France will see life restored to the emblem of her greatness, the phoenix-like, will rise on the horizon of time to claim for the future generation her position among the first-rate powers of Europe.

To the old city we must wend our way in thought. Crossing the venerable bridge at Notre Dame, we enter at once the Rue de Seine, where we pause before the bank and residence of Cassier.

The Usurer.

At a desk in the office we observe a lowsized, whiskered man. Intelligence beams from a lofty brow; sharp features an aquiline nose tell of Jewish character; his eye glistens and dulls as the heaving heart throbs with its tides of joy and sorrow. Speculation, that glides at times into golden dreams, brightens his whole features with a sunbeam of joy; but suddenly it is clouded. Some unseen intruder casts a baneful shadow on the ungrasped prize; the features of the usurer contract, the hand is clenched, the brow is wrinkled, and woe betide the luckless debtor whose misfortunes would lead him to the banker's bureau during the eclipse of his good-humor!

Cassier was a banker by name, but in reality dealt in usurious loans, Shylock-like wringing the pound of flesh from the victims of his avarice. He was known and dreaded by all the honest tradesmen of the city; the curse of the orphan and the widow, whom he unfeelingly drove into the streets, followed in his path; the children stopped their games and hid until he passed. That repulsive character which haunts the evil-doers of society marked the aged banker as an object of dread and scorn to his immediate neighbors.

In religion Cassier at first strongly advocated the principles of Lutheranism; but, as is ever the case with those set adrift on the sea of doubt, freed from the anchor of faith, the definite character of his belief was shipwrecked in a confusion of ideas. At length he lapsed into the negative deism of the French infidels, just then commencing to gain ground in France. He joined them, too, in open blasphemies against God and plotting against the stability of the Government. The blood chills at reading some of the awful oaths administered to the partisans of those secret societies. They proposed to war against God, to sweep away all salutary checks against the indulgence of passion, to level the alter and the throne, and advocated the claims of those impious theories that in modern times have found their fullest development in Mormonism and Communism.

Further on we shall find this noxious weed, that flourishes in the vineyards whose hedges are broken down, producing its poisonous fruit. But it was at this period of our history that he became a frequent attendant at their reunions, returning at midnight, half intoxicated, to pour into the horrified ears of his wife and children the issue of the last blasphemous and revolutionary debate that marked the progress and development of their impious tendencies.

No wonder Heaven sent on the Cassier family the curse that forms the thrill of our tragic memoir.

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