La Cabarus.
How, above all, shall a poor National Convention, withstand it?
In this poor National Convention, broken, bewildered by long
terror, perturbations, and guillotinement, there is no Pilot,
there is not now even a Danton, who could undertake to steer you
anywhither, in such press of weather. The utmost a bewildered
Convention can do, is to veer, and trim, and try to keep itself
steady: and rush, undrowned, before the wind. Needless to
struggle; to fling helm a-lee, and make ’_bout ship!_ A
bewildered Convention sails not in the teeth of the wind; but is
rapidly blown round again. So strong is the wind, we say; and so
changed; blowing fresher and fresher, as from the sweet
South-West; your devastating North-Easters, and wild
tornado-gusts of Terror, blown utterly out! All Sansculottic
things are passing away; all things are becoming Culottic.
Do but look at the cut of clothes; that light visible Result,
significant of a thousand things which are not so visible. In
winter 1793, men went in red nightcaps; Municipals themselves in
_sabots;_ the very Citoyennes had to petition against such
headgear. But now in this winter 1794, where is the red nightcap?
With the thing beyond the Flood. Your monied Citoyen ponders in
what elegantest style he shall dress himself: whether he shall
not even dress himself as the Free Peoples of Antiquity. The more
adventurous Citoyenne has already done it. Behold her, that
beautiful adventurous Citoyenne: in costume of the Ancient
Greeks, such Greek as Painter David could teach; her sweeping
tresses snooded by glittering antique fillet; bright-eyed tunic
of the Greek women; her little feet naked, as in Antique Statues,
with mere sandals, and winding-strings of riband,—defying the
frost!
There is such an effervescence of Luxury. For your Emigrant
_Ci-devants_ carried not their mansions and furnitures out of the
country with them; but left them standing here: and in the swift
changes of property, what with money coined on the Place de la
Révolution, what with Army-furnishings, sales of Emigrant Domain
and Church Lands and King’s Lands, and then with the
Aladdin’s-lamp of Agio in a time of Paper-money, such mansions
have found new occupants. Old wine, drawn from _Ci-devant_
bottles, descends new throats. Paris has swept herself, relighted
herself; Salons, Soupers not Fraternal, beam once more with
suitable effulgence, very singular in colour. The fair Cabarus is
come out of Prison; wedded to her red-gloomy Dis, whom they say
she treats too loftily: fair Cabarus gives the most brilliant
soirées. Round her is gathered a new Republican Army, of
Citoyennes in sandals; _Ci-devants_ or other: what remnants
soever of the old grace survive, are rallied there. At her
right-hand, in this cause, labours fair Josephine the Widow
Beauharnais, though in straitened circumstances: intent, both of
them, to blandish down the grimness of Republican austerity, and
recivilise mankind.
Recivilise, as of old they were civilised: by witchery of the
Orphic fiddle-bow, and Euterpean rhythm; by the Graces, by the
Smiles! Thermidorian Deputies are there in those soirées; Editor
Fréron, _Orateur du Peuple;_ Barras, who has known other dances
than the Carmagnole. Grim Generals of the Republic are there; in
enormous horse-collar neckcloth, good against sabre-cuts; the
hair gathered all into one knot, “flowing down behind, fixed with
a comb.” Among which latter do we not recognise, once more, the
little bronzed-complexioned Artillery-Officer of Toulon, home
from the Italian Wars! Grim enough; of lean, almost cruel aspect:
for he has been in trouble, in ill health; also in ill favour, as
a man promoted, deservingly or not, by the Terrorists and
Robespierre Junior. But does not Barras know him? Will not Barras
speak a word for him? Yes,—if at any time it will serve Barras so
to do. Somewhat forlorn of fortune, for the present, stands that
Artillery-Officer; looks, with those deep earnest eyes of his,
into a future as waste as the most. Taciturn; yet with the
strangest utterances in him, if you awaken him, which smite home,
like light or lightning:—on the whole, rather dangerous? A
“dissociable” man? Dissociable enough; a natural terror and
horror to all Phantasms, being himself of the genus Reality! He
stands here, without work or outlook, in this forsaken
manner;—glances nevertheless, it would seem, at the kind glance
of Josephine Beauharnais; and, for the rest, with severe
countenance, with open eyes and closed lips, waits what will
betide.
That the Balls, therefore, have a new figure this winter, we can
see. Not Carmagnoles, rude “whirlblasts of rags,” as Mercier
called them “precursors of storm and destruction:” no, soft Ionic
motions; fit for the light sandal, and antique Grecian tunic!
Efflorescence of Luxury has come out: for men have wealth; nay
new-got wealth; and under the Terror you durst not dance except
in rags. Among the innumerable kinds of Balls, let the hasty
reader mark only this single one: the kind they call Victim
Balls, _Bals à Victime_. The dancers, in choice costume, have all
crape round the left arm: to be admitted, it needs that you be a
_Victime;_ that you have lost a relative under the Terror. Peace
to the Dead; let us _dance_ to their memory! For in all ways one
must dance.
It is very remarkable, according to Mercier, under what varieties
of figure this great business of dancing goes on. “The women,”
says he, “are Nymphs, Sultanas; sometimes Minervas, Junos, even
Dianas. In light-unerring gyrations they swim there; with such
earnestness of purpose; with perfect silence, so absorbed are
they. What is singular,” continues he, “the onlookers are as it
were mingled with the dancers; form as it were a circumambient
element round the different contre-dances, yet without deranging
them. It is rare, in fact, that a Sultana in such circumstances
experience the smallest collision. Her pretty foot darts down, an
inch from mine; she is off again; she is as a flash of light: but
soon the measure recalls her to the point she set out from. Like
a glittering comet she travels her eclipse, revolving on herself,
as by a double effect of gravitation and attraction.”[760]
Looking forward a little way, into Time, the same Mercier
discerns _Merveilleuses_ in “flesh-coloured drawers” with gold
circlets; mere dancing Houris of an artificial
Mahomet’s-Paradise: much too Mahometan. Montgaillard, with his
splenetic eye, notes a no less strange thing; that every
fashionable Citoyenne you meet is in an interesting situation.
Good Heavens, _every?_ Mere pillows and stuffing! adds the acrid
man;—such, in a time of depopulation by war and guillotine, being
the fashion.[761] No further seek its merits to disclose.
Behold also instead of the old grim _Tappe-durs_ of Robespierre,
what new street-groups are these? Young men habited not in
black-shag Carmagnole spencer, but in superfine _habit carré_ or
spencer with rectangular tail appended to it; “square-tailed
coat,” with elegant antiguillotinish specialty of collar; “the
hair plaited at the temples,” and knotted back, long-flowing, in
military wise: young men of what they call the _Muscadin_ or
Dandy species! Fréron, in his fondness names them _Jeunesse
Dorée_, Golden, or Gilt Youth. They have come out, these Gilt
Youths, in a kind of resuscitated state; they wear crape round
the left arm, such of them as were _Victims_. More they carry
clubs loaded with lead; in an angry manner: any _Tappe-dur_ or
remnant of Jacobinism they may fall in with, shall fare the
worse. They have suffered much: their friends guillotined; their
pleasures, frolics, superfine collars ruthlessly repressed: “ware
now the base Red Nightcaps who did it! Fair Cabarus and the Army
of Greek sandals smile approval. In the Théâtre Feydeau, young
Valour in square-tailed coat eyes Beauty in Greek sandals, and
kindles by her glances: Down with Jacobinism! No Jacobin hymn or
demonstration, only Thermidorian ones, shall be permitted here:
we beat down Jacobinism with clubs loaded with lead.
But let any one who has examined the Dandy nature, how petulant
it is, especially in the gregarious state, think what an element,
in sacred right of insurrection, this Gilt Youth was! Broils and
battery; war without truce or measure! Hateful is Sansculottism,
as Death and Night. For indeed is not the Dandy _culottic_,
habilatory, by law of existence; “a cloth-animal: one that lives,
moves, and has his being in cloth?”—
So goes it, waltzing, bickering; fair Cabarus, by Orphic
witchery, struggling to recivilise mankind. Not unsuccessfully,
we hear. What utmost Republican grimness can resist Greek
sandals, in Ionic motion, the very toes covered with gold
rings?[762] By degrees the indisputablest new-politeness rises;
grows, with vigour. And yet, whether, even to this day, that
inexpressible tone of society known under the old Kings, when Sin
had “lost all its deformity” (with or without advantage to us),
and airy Nothing had obtained such a local habitation and
establishment as she never had,—be recovered? Or even, whether it
be not lost beyond recovery?[763]—Either way, the world must
contrive to struggle on.