The Whites and the Blues (33 page)

Then came the terrible day of Quiberon, during which, according to Pitt, "English blood did not flow," and, ac cording to Sheridan, "English honor streamed from every pore.''

Meantime the victories of Hoche and Pichegru had borne fruit. In consequence of the recovery of the lines of Weis-sembourg, at which our readers were present, when the tri color flag was seen triumphantly waving in the hands of Saint-Just as he crossed the frontier, and floated victori ously over Bavaria, Frederick William, who had been the first to invade French territory, recognized the French Ee-public and made peace with it. Having captured no ter ritory from each other, the two powers had nothing to restore. Bat eighty thousand slept on the plains of Alsace and Champagne, and the terrible strife had begun which neither Jena nor Leipsic was to terminate.

Meantime the army of the Eastern Pyrenees had in vaded Biscay, Vittoria, and Bilbao. Already master of that part of the frontier to which access was most difficult, the French, whom their last victories had brought to the neighborhood of Pampeluna, were in a position to capture

the capital of Navarre, and open an easy road to the two kingdoms of Castile and that of Aragon. Whereupon the king of Spain made proposals of peace.

This was the second crowned head which had recognized the existence of the French Eepublic; and in recognizing it, the king tacitly condoned what he no doubt regarded as the murder of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette.

The peace was signed. Before the necessities of war, family ties ceased to be considered. France abandoned her conquests beyond the Pyrenees, and Spain ceded to France her possessions on the island of Saint-Domingo. But, as we have just said, it is not from the standpoint of material ac cessions that the question of peace with Spain must be con sidered. No! the question was a moral one.

This the reader will already have understood. This de fection of Charles IY. from the royal cause was an immense step, and one that was far more important than that taken by Frederick William. Frederick William was not bound in any way to the Bourbons of France, while, in signing the peace with the Eepublic, the Spanish king ratified all the decrees of the Convention.

Meantime the Army of the North, which was engaged with the Austrians, took Ypres and Charleroi, won the battle of Fleurus, recaptured Landrecies, occupied Namur and Treves, reconquered Valenciennes, and took Creve-Cceur, Ulrich, Gorcomm, Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Eotter-dam, and The Hague. At last an unheard-of thing hap pened—something which had never been seen before, and which until then had been absent from the picturesque an nals of French warfare; the Dutch men-of-war, frozen in the ice, were captured by a regiment of hussars. This strange feat of arms, which seemed to be a caprice of Providence in behalf of the French, led to the capitula tion of Zealand.

CHAPTER II

A GLIMPSE OF PARIS—THE INCROYABLES

ALL these great victories naturally had their echo in Paris—Paris, that short-sighted city which has ever had a limited horizon, save when some great na tional excitement has driven her beyond her material in terests. Paris, weary of bloodshed, eagerly sought after pleasure, and was only too glad to turn her eyes toward the theatre of war, so glorious was the drama which was there being enacted.

Most of the players of the Come'die-Frangaise and the Theatre Feydeau, who had been imprisoned as royalists, had been liberated after the 9th Thermidor. Larive, Saint-Prix, Mole*, Dazincourt, Saint-Phare, and Elleviou had been received with frantic applause at the Com^die-Franchise and at the Feydeau. Everybody rushed to the theatres, where the "Marseillaise" was beginning to give place to the "Re-veil du Peuple.'' And at last the jeunesse doree (gilded youth) of Fr^ron began to appear.

Every day we utter those words "Fre*ron" and "jeu nesse doreV' without having a clear idea of what they mean. Let us see.

There have been two Fre*rons in France; one was an honorable man, an upright and severe critic, who may perhaps have been mistaken, but who erred in good faith. This was Fr£ron, senior—Elie-Catherine Fr^ron. The other knew neither law nor faith, his only religion was hate, his sole motive was vengeance, and his one god was self-inter est. This was Fre'ron, junior—Louis-Stanislas FreVon.

The father saw the whole of the eighteenth century pass before him. He was opposed to every innovation in art, and, in the name of Racine and Boileau, he attacked all such in literature. He was opposed to all political innovations, and

attacked them in the name of religion and royalty. He re coiled before none of the giants of modern philosophism. 1

He attacked Diderot, who had come from his little town of Langres in sabots and jacket, half priest, half philoso pher. He attacked Jean-Jacques, who had come from Geneva, penniless and without a jacket. He attacked D'Alembert, a foundling discovered on the steps of a church, who was for a long time called Jean Lerond, from the name of the place where he was found. He at tacked those great lords called Buffon and Montesquieu. Finally, surviving even the anger of Yoltaire, who had tried to injure him with his satire, "The Poor Devil," to kill him with his epigrams, and to annihilate him with his comedy of 4 ' The Scotchwoman,'' he stood up and cried out to Yoltaire in the midst of his triumph, "Kemember that thou art mortal 1"

He died before his two great antagonists, Yoltaire and Eousseau. In 1776 he succumbed to an attack of gout, occa sioned by the suppression of his journal, "The Literary Year." This had been his weapon, and when it was broken he no longer cared to live.

The son, who had for godfather King Stanislas, and who had been a schoolfellow of Kobespierre, drank to the dregs the draught which public opinion had poured into the pa ternal cup.

The injuries accumulated during thirty years upon the father's head fell like an avalanche of shame upon the son; and as his heart held neither faith nor fidelity, he could not bear up under them. Belief in a duty nobly fulfilled had made the father invincible. The son, having no counter poise to the scorn which overwhelmed him, became fero cious; wrongfully held in contempt, since he was not re sponsible for his father's acts, he resolved to make himself hated on his own account. The laurels which Marat culled in editing u L'Ami du Peuple" destroyed Fre*ron's rest. He founded u The Orator of the People."

1 "We do not believe that philosophism is good French from the standpoint of the academician, but it expresses our meaning better than philosophy does.

Naturally timid, Fre*ron could not restrain Ms cruelty, being too weak and fearful. When sent to Marseilles he became the terror of the city. "While Carlier drowned his prisoners at Nantes, and Collot d'Herbois shot his at Lyons with musketry, at Marseilles Fr£ron did better—he used grape-shot.

One day, after a discharge of artillery, suspecting that some had fallen unharmed with those who were struck, and were counterfeiting death, he called out, in order to save the time necessary to search for them: "Let those who are not harmed stand up, and they will be pardoned."

The unfortunates who were not hurt trusted in his word, and stood up.

"Fire!" said Fr&on.

And the gunners began again, doing their work with more accuracy, for this time no one stood up.

When he returned to Paris, Paris had made a step on the road to mercy. The friend of Kobespierre became his enemy. The Jacobin took a step backward and became a Cordelier. He scented the 9th Thermidor. He made himself a Thermidorian with Barras and Tallien, he de nounced Fouquier-Tinville, and, like Cadmus, he sowed the teeth of the dragon which was called the Kevolution, and they sprang up at once amid the blood of the old regime and the filth of the new, in the shape of that jeunesse doree which took his name, and whose chief he was.

The jeunesse dor6e, as distinguished from the sans culottes, who wore short hair, round jackets, trousers, and the red cap, either wore long tresses of hair, revived from the time of Louis XIII., and called "cadenettes" (from the name of its inventor, Cadenet, a younger son of Luynes), or hair falling over their shoulders, in what was styled "dog's-ears." They also revived the use of powder, and wore it plentifully upon their hair, which was turned back with a comb. Their morning costume consisted of a very short frock-coat and small-clothes of black or green

velvet. When in full-dress they wore, instead of this frook-coat, a coat of light color cut square, buttoned over the stomach, with tails coming down to the calves of their legs. Their muslin cravat was high and had enormous ends. The waistcoat was of pique* or white dimity, with broad facings and trimmings; two watch-chains hung over small-clothes of gray or apple-green satin, which came down half-way over the calves of the legs, where they buttoned with three buttons, and were finished off with a knot of ribbon. Silk stockings, striped either red, yellow, or blue, and pumps, which were the more elegant in proportion to their light ness, an opera-hat under the arm, and an enormous cane in the hand, completed the costume of an Incroyable.

Now why did those scoffers, who seize upon everything, call the individuals who compose the gilded youth of Paris the incroyalles ? "We are about to tell you.

Change of dress did not suffice to distinguish a man from the revolutionists, he must also change his pronunciation. A honeyed dialect was substituted for the rude speech of 1793 and the democratic thou; consequently, instead of roll ing their r's as the pupils of the conservatory do to-day, they suppressed them altogether, and the letter became very near being entirely lost, like the Greek dative. Its bones were taken out of the language, together with its strength, and instead, as formerly, of giving one another their Parrole d'honneur, with a strong emphasis on the consonant, they contented themselves with giving their Paole cThonneu.

According to circumstances, they had a gande paole d'honneu, or a petite paole d'honneu; but whichever of these two was used to support something either difficult or impossible to believe, the listener, too polite to contra dict the person with whom he was conversing, contented himself with saying: "It is incoyable" (incredible), sup pressing the r in incroyable.

Whereupon the other would say: "I give you my sol emn grande (or, as they said, gande) word of honor."

And then, of course, no doubt remained.

Hence the designation Incroyable changed to Incoyabk, given to the jeunesse doree.

CHAPTER III

THE MERVEILLEUSES

THE incoydble, 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 Co rinthian draperies of the Phrynes and the Aspasias. Tunic, peplum, and mantle, all were cut after the fashion of an tiquity. The less a woman had on to conceal her naked ness 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. JSneas did not recognize his mother until she emerged from the clouds. Incessut patuit dea, says Yirgil, "by her step was the goddess known. n 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 Lyc^e-Bal or the Hotel Th&usson 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

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he or she had had relatives either drowned by Carlier, guil lotined by Eobespierre, shot by Collot d'Herbois, or blown to pieces by Fre*ron.

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 Pir^ 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 na tional police, had no Parisian police. It is a singular fact that public murder seemed to have destroyed private mur der; 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 Con vention, 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 Yalmy, and had proclaimed the Eepublic—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

battled with foes without and within. It had raised four teen 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 Dag ger, Men of the 10th of August, Men of September, Giron-dins, 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-Eevolutionists, Inhabitants of the Kidge, Terrorists, Ma-ratists, Cut-throats, Drinkers of Blood, Patriots of 1789, Companions of Jehu, Chouans.

Let us add the jeunesse doree of Freron, 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 Andre* Ch^nier, the brother of Marie-Joseph Chenier, was beheaded. His execu-

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 Eobespierre. His companions in the cart were MM. de Montalembert, De Cre'quy, De Montmo-rency, De Loiserolles—that sublime old man who took his son's place and cheerfully died in his stead—and finally Boucher, the author of "The Months," who did not know that he was to die with Andre' Chenier until he saw him in the cart, when he uttered an exclamation of joy, and, seating himself near him, recited those beautiful lines of Eacine:

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 Andre* Chenier recited his last verses to his friend, which he was in the act of writing when he was summoned by the execu tioner. He had them with him written in pencil; and after having read them to Koucher, 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 Andre* Che nier'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.

As he mounted the scaffold, Andre* put his hand to his forehead and said with a sigh: ' * And yet I did have some thing there!"

"You are mistaken," cried the friend who was not to die; and pointing to his heart he added, "it is there."

Andre Che'nier, 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.

CHAPTER IV

THE SECTIONS

THE day the Convention proclaimed the Constitution of the Year III., every one exclaimed: "The Con vention has signed its death-warrant."

In fact it was expected that, as in the case of the Con stituent Assembly, it would, by a self-sacrifice little under stood, forbid to its retiring members election to the Assem bly which was to succeed them. It did nothing of the kind. The Convention understood very well that the last vital spark of Eepublicanism was hidden within its own body. With a people so volatile as the French, who in a moment of enthusiasm had overturned a monarchy which had en dured eight centuries, the children of the Eepublic could not in three years have become so rooted in their habits and customs as safely to be left to follow the natural course of events. The Kepublic could be adequately guarded only by those who had created it, and who were interested in perpetuating it.

But who were they ?

Who, indeed, save the members of the Convention which had abolished the feudal constitution on the 10th of July and the 4th of August, 1789; which had overturned the

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throne on the 10th of August, 1792, and which, from the 21st of January to the time of which we are writing, had fought the whole of Europe, had compelled Prussia and Spain to sue for peace, and had driven Austria beyond the frontiers. Therefore, on the 5th Fructidor (August 22), the Convention decreed that the Legislative Assembly should be composed of two bodies—the Council of the Five Hundred and the Council of the Ancients; that the first should comprise five hundred members, upon whom should devolve the duty of originating bills, and the second two hundred and fifty, whose sanction should be necessary to make them law; that these two bodies should include two-thirds of the present Convention, and that one-third only should therefore be composed of new members.

It remained to be seen who should have the responsi bility of the choice. Would the Convention itself name those of its members who were to become part of the new body, or would that duty devolve upon the electoral colleges ?

On the 13th Fructidor (August 30), after a stormy ses sion, it was decided that the electoral colleges should make the selection. The determination once arrived at, these two days were designated the 5th Fructidor and the 13th Fruc tidor, respectively.

Perhaps we are dwelling a little longer than is necessary upon this purely historical portion of our work; but we are rapidly approaching the terrible day of the 13th Vende*-miaire—the first on which the Parisians heard the sound of cannon in their streets—and we wish to fasten the crime upon its real authors.

Paris then, as now, although in a lesser degree, since its centralization had lasted only four or five years at the time —Paris was then the brain of France. What Paris accepted, France sanctioned. This was clearly demonstrated when the Grirondins unsuccessfully attempted to unite the provinces.

Now Paris was divided into forty-eight Sections. These Sections were not royalist; on the contrary, they protested

that they were attached to the Kepublic. Except for two or three, whose reactionary opinions were well-known, none would have fallen into the error of sacrificing so many citi zens, among them some truly great men, for a principle, and then have rejected chat principle before it had borne fruit. But Paris, terrified at finding herself knee-deep in blood, stopped short three-quarters of the way and roused herself to fight the Terrorists, who wanted the executions to continue, while the city was desirous that they should cease. So that, without deserting the flag of the Kevolu-tion, she showed herself unwilling to follow that flag further than the Grirondins and the Cordeliers had carried it.

This flag would then become her own, since it sheltered the remains of the two parties we have named. It would henceforth be that of the moderate Kepublic, and would carry the device: "Death to the Jacobins!"

But the precautions of the Convention were designed to save those few Jacobins who had escaped the 9th Thermi-dor, and in whose hands alone the Convention wished to place the holy Ark of the Kepublic.

Without suspecting it, however, the Sections, fearful of a return of the Keign of Terror, served the royalists better than their most devoted friends could have done.

Never had so many strangers been seen in Paris. The hotels were crowded from cellar to garret. The Faubourg Saint-Grermaine, which had bed* deserted for six months, was crowded with returned emigres, Chouans, refractory priests, men who had been employed on the military trains, and divorced women.

There was a rumor that Tallien and Hoche had gone over to the royalists. The truth was that the latter had converted Kov&re and Saladin, and that there was no occa sion for them to hold out inducements to Lanjuinais, Boissy d'Anglas, Henry de Lariviere and Lesage, who had always been royalists, even when they wore the Kepublican masks 0

It was reported that the royalists had made Pichegru extraordinary offers, and that, although he had refused

them at first, lie had at last yielded to them, and that, for a million francs in ready money, two hundred thousand francs from the funds, the Chateau of Chambord, the duchy of Artois, and the government of Alsace, the transaction had been arranged.

Much astonishment was occasioned by the great number of returned emigre's, some with false passports and under assumed names, others giving their real names, and de manding that they should be erased from the list of the proscribed; others with false certificates of residence, which vouched for the fact that they had never left France. De crees, insisting that all returned emigres should return to their own districts, and there await the decision of the Committee of Public Safety, were issued in vain. They found means to evade these decrees and to remain in Paris. It was felt, not without uneasiness, that accident alone had not brought so many men of the same political faith to the capital at the same time. It was generally con ceded that some malign influence was at work, and that at a given moment the earth would open beneath the feet of one of the numerous parties which abounded in Paris.

A great many gray coats with black and green collars were seen, and every one turned to look at them. They were the Chouan colors. Wherever these young men, who wore the royal livery, were seen, brawls were almost sure to ensue, which thus far had passed for private quarrels.