the merveilleuses
the incoyable, that hybrid of the revolution, had his feminine counterpart, like him born of the same epoch. she was called the meiveilleuse.
she borrowed her raiment, not from a new fashion like the incoyable, but from antiquity, from the greek and corinthian draperies of the phrynes and the aspasias. tunic, peplum, and mantle, all were cut after the fashion of antiquity. the less a woman had on to conceal her nakedness the more elegant she was. the true meiveilleuse, or merveilleuses—for that of course was the real word—had bare arms and legs, the tunic, modelled after that of diana, was often separated at the side, with nothing more than a cameo to catch the two parts together above the knee.
but this was not enough. the ladies took advantage of the warm weather to appear at balls and at the promenade with filmy garments more diaphanous than the clouds which enveloped venus, when she led her son to dido. ?neas did not recognize his mother until she emerged from the clouds. incessut patuit dea, says virgil, "by her step was the goddess known." these ladies, however, did not need to emerge from their clouds in order to be seen, for they were perfectly visible through them, and those who took them for goddesses must have done so only out of courtesy. this airy tissue of which juvenal speaks became all the rage.
besides private parties they met at public balls. people gathered either at the lycée-bal or the h?tel thélusson to mingle their tears and their plans of vengeance with their dancing. these assemblies were called the "balls of the victims," and, indeed, no one was admitted to them unless[pg 239] he or she had had relatives either drowned by carlier, guillotined by robespierre, shot by collot d'herbois, or blown to pieces by fréron.
horace vernet, who designed costumes for a living, has left a charming portfolio of the costumes of that period drawn from life with that delightful wit with which heaven had endowed him. nothing could be more amusing than this grotesque collection, and it is difficult to imagine how an incoyable and a meiveilleuse could meet without laughing in each other's faces.
but some of the costumes adopted by the fops at these balls of the victims were terrible in character. old general piré has told me twenty times that he has met incoyables at these balls wearing waistcoats and trousers made of human skins. those who mourned only some distant relative, like an aunt or an uncle, contented themselves with dipping their little finger in some blood-red liquid; when this was the case they cut off the corresponding finger of their glove, and carried their little pot of blood to the ball to renew the color, as ladies did their rouge-pots.
while dancing, they conspired against the republic. this was easy, because the convention, which had its national police, had no parisian police. it is a singular fact that public murder seemed to have destroyed private murder; and never were fewer crimes committed in france than during the years of '93, '94 and '95. passions had other outlets.
the moment was approaching, however, when the convention, that terrible convention, which had abolished royalty on the 21st of september, when it entered upon its functions to the sound of the guns of valmy, and had proclaimed the republic—the moment was approaching when the convention was to abdicate its power. it had been a cruel mother. it had devoured the girondins, the cordeliers, the jacobins, that is to say, the most eloquent, the most energetic, and the most intelligent of her children. but it had been a devoted daughter. it had successfully[pg 240] battled with foes without and within. it had raised fourteen armies. to be sure, they had been badly clothed, poorly shod, badly cared for, and still more poorly paid. but what did that matter? these fourteen armies not only drove the enemy on all sides from the frontier, but they took the duchy of nice and savoy, marched against spain and laid hands on holland.
it created the national institute, the polytechnic school, the normal school, the conservatories of art and science, and established a national budget. it promulgated eight thousand three hundred and seventy decrees, most of them revolutionary. it gave a tremendous strength of character to men and things. grandeur was gigantic, courage was temerity, and stoicism, impassibility. never was colder disdain expressed for the executioner; never was blood shed with less remorse.
do you know how many parties there were in france during the years of '93 to '95? thirty-three. would you like to know their names?
ministerial, partisans of civil life, knights of the dagger, men of the 10th of august, men of september, girondins, brissotins, federalists, men of the state, men of the 31st of may, moderates, suspects, men of the plain, toads of the marsh, men of the mountain.
all these in 1793 alone. we now pass to 1794.
alarmists, men of pity, sleepers, emissaries of pitt and coburg, muscadins, hebertists, sans-culottes, counter-revolutionists, inhabitants of the ridge, terrorists, maratists, cut-throats, drinkers of blood, patriots of 1789, companions of jehu, chouans.
let us add the jeunesse dorée of fréron, and we come to the 22d of august—the day when the new constitution, that of the year iii., after having been debated article by article, was adopted by the convention. the gold louis was then worth twelve hundred francs in assignats.
it was during this latter period that andré-chénier, the brother of marie-joseph chénier, was beheaded. his execu[pg 241]tion took place on the 25th of july, 1794, at eight o'clock in the morning; that is to say, on the 7th thermidor, two days before the death of robespierre. his companions in the cart were mm. de montalembert, de créquy, de montmorency, de loiserolles—that sublime old man who took his son's place and cheerfully died in his stead—and finally roucher, the author of "the months," who did not know that he was to die with andré chénier until he saw him in the cart, when he uttered an exclamation of joy, and, seating himself near him, recited those beautiful lines of racine:
now fortune doth assume a newer trend,
since thee again i find, thou faithful friend;
her wrath already hath unbent,
and thus our lot in common blent.
a friend, who dared to risk his life by following the cart in order to prolong the final farewell, heard the two poets speaking of poetry, love and the future. on the way andré chénier recited his last verses to his friend, which he was in the act of writing when he was summoned by the executioner. he had them with him written in pencil; and after having read them to roucher, he gave them to the third friend, who did not leave him until they had reached the scaffold. they were thus preserved; and latouche, to whom we owe the only edition we have of andré chénier's poems, was enabled to include them in the volume we all know by heart:
as a last soft breeze, a tender ray,
gleams at the close of a lovely day,
so doth my lyre at the scaffold sound its lay;
perhaps e'en now the forfeit i must pay!
and e'er the hour its appointed round
with fleeting resonance hath wound,
tipping the sixty steps of its allotted time,
unending sleep will close these eyes of mine.
and e'er this verse i now begin shall fade,
the messenger of death, ill-omened harbinger of shade,
with its black escort of ill-fame
along its darkling corridors will speed my name.[pg 242]
as he mounted the scaffold, andré put his hand to his forehead and said with a sigh: "and yet i did have something there!"
"you are mistaken," cried the friend who was not to die; and pointing to his heart he added, "it is there."
andré chénier, for whose sake we have wandered from our subject, and whose memory has drawn these few words from us, was the first to plant the standard of a new poetry. no one before him had written verses like his. nay, more; no one will ever write like verses after him.
