[1789 A.D.] out from Paris; to gallop "on all radii," or highways, towards all points of France? It is a miracle, which no penetrating man will call in question.

Alas, the

Thus, in any case, with what rubs soever, shall the Bastille be abolished from our Earth; and with it, Feudalism, Despotism; and, one hopes, Scoundrelism generally, and all hard usage of man by his brother man. Scoundrelism and hard usage are not so easy of abolition! But as for the Bastille, it sinks day after day, and month after month; its ashlars and boulders tumbling down continually, by express orders of our Municipals. Crowds of the curious roam through its caverns; gaze on the skeletons found walled-up, on the oubliettes, iron cages, monstrous stone-blocks with padlock chains. One day we discern Mirabeau there; along with the Genevese Dumont. Workers and onlookers make reverent way for him; fling verses, flowers on his path, Bastille-papers and curiosities into his carriage, with vivats.

Able Editors compile Books from the Bastille Archives; from what of them remain unburnt. The Key of that Robber-Den shall cross the Atlantic; shall lie on Washington's hall-table. The great Clock ticks now in a private patriotic Clockmaker's apartment; no longer measuring hours of mere heaviness. Vanished is the Bastille, what we call vanished: the body, or sandstones, of it hanging, in benign metamorphosis, for centuries to come, over the Seine waters, as Pont Louis Seize; the soul of it living, perhaps still longer, in the memories of men.

So far, ye august Senators, with your Tennis-Court Oaths, your inertia and impetus, your sagacity and pertinacity, have ye brought us. "And yet think, Messieurs," as the Petitioners justly urged, "you who were our saviours did yourselves need saviours"-the brave Bastillers, namely; workmen of Paris; many of them in straitened pecuniary circumstances! Subscriptions are opened; Lists are formed, more accurate than Elie's; harangues are delivered. A Body of "Bastille Heroes," tolerably complete, did get together; -comparable to the Argonauts; hoping to endure like them. But in little more than a year, the whirlpool of things threw them asunder again, and they sank. So many highest superlatives achieved by man are followed by new higher; and dwindle into comparatives and positives! The Siege of the Bastille, weighed with which, in the Historical balance, most other sieges, including that of Troy Town, are gossamer, cost, as we find, in killed and mortally wounded, on the part of the Besiegers, some Eighty-three persons: on the part of the Besieged, after all that straw-burning, fire-pumping, and deluge of musketry, One poor solitary Invalide, shot stone-dead (roide-mort) on the battlements! The Bastille Fortress, like the City of Jericho, was overturned by miraculous sound.k

TAINE'S PICTURE OF THE OLD RÉGIME

Whatever act or day may be taken as the beginning of the French Revolution, with the fall of the Bastille flames of revolt went leaping skyward. Its memories were grim with tyranny, though the mild Louis XVI had almost emptied its cells, and did not abuse the lettres de cachet after the manner of his predecessor. But the oppression had reached an intolerable state before him, and his palliatives were as weak as his conduct was untrustworthy from vacillation and ingrained autocracy. We are about to enter a hideous carnival of public atrocity. But it is only fair to remember what had gone before, and of what quality was the aristocracy that bowed the peasantry and the middle-class to the dust. Let us read at some length the summing-up of

[1789 A.D.]

the Old Régime as Taine' made it in his famous book. Let us remember in later pages what follows here, that judgment may be the better balanced.a

In order to understand thoroughly the history of the French kings, it is necessary to start with the assumption that the land of France is their property by hereditary right, a sort of farm transmitted from father to son, small at first but gradually growing larger, owing to the many profitable transactions the astute proprietor is able to make at the expense of his neighbours, until finally it attains a prodigious size. After eight hundred years of such proprietorship the royal possessions comprise twenty-seven thousand square leagues. On many points the owner's interest and pride have been in accord with the public good, and on the whole he cannot be called a bad manager, rather a better one than some, since he has constantly contrived to enrich himself. Whether feudal or modern, however, the domain is still his to use or abuse as he pleases, and he who uses without stint invariably finishes by abusing.

Under such conditions to subordinate private interests entirely to those of state would require the saintliness of Louis IX, or the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, whereas the king is merely a nobleman like all the others about his court; a trifle less well-bred, possibly, and exposed to greater temptations and worse counsels, but having like them his personal pride and tastes, his family, wife, mistresses, and boon companions who must all be made content before public affairs are given a thought.

Indeed, for a period of a hundred years, or from 1672 to 1774, every war that is undertaken covers some personal or family intrigue, some impulse of piqued vanity, or the gratification of a woman's whim.1 Louis XV's conduct of his wars is even more reprehensible than the spirit in which he undertakes them, and Louis XVI, in every act of his foreign policy, is under the strictest conjugal control. In his private life the king resembles any other nobleman of France with the exception that being the greatest he is surrounded by a greater pomp. We shall presently describe his mode of living and it will be seen by means of what exactions so much splendour is maintained; meanwhile let us note a few details.

The Spendthrift Court

According to authentic accounts Louis XV expends for Madame de Pompadour alone the sum of thirty-six million livres, equal to seventy-two millions [£2,800,000 or $14,000,000] at the present time. D'Argenson" states that in 1751 there are four thousand horses in the king's stables, and that his household and personal expenses amount for the same year to sixty-eight millions, or about one quarter of the public revenue. What wonder in all

this when one considers that the sovereign of these times is looked upon as a mighty lord of the manor, whose perfect right it is to enjoy to the full the prerogatives of his position? He is at liberty to build, receive, give feasts, and hunt, precisely as he wills, and being absolute master of his own means can bestow money upon whom he pleases, and a special grace seems to descend upon those whom he singles out for such high favour.

Necker, taking charge of the state finances, finds that twenty-eight millions in pensions are annually leaving the royal treasury, and after his downfall money is poured in streams upon the favourites of the court. Even

1 Madame de Pompadour, writing to Marshal d'Estrées concerning the operations of his campaign, traced out a species of map for him and marked with patches the places she advised him to attack or defend. MADAME DE GENLIS.m

[1789 A.D.] during his time the king is cajoled into raising to fortune the friends of his wife; to the countess de Polignac he gives four hundred thousand francs for the payment of her debts, eight hundred thousand as a marriage portion for her daughter, the promise of an estate yielding thirty-five thousand livres annually for herself, and to her lover, the count de Vaudreuil, a pension of thirty thousand livres. To the princess de Lamballe, both as salary for herself in the office of superintendent that has been re-established for her benefit, and as a pension for her brother, he gives one hundred thousand écus yearly!

But it is under Calonne that prodigality reaches a truly insensate height. The king has been reproached with parsimony; why should he draw his purse-strings tight? Once launched on the road of free giving he bestows, buys, builds, exchanges, and comes to the aid of nobles in distress, with a truly royal lavishness; he literally scatters money on all sides. A single instance will suffice to illustrate: when the noble family of Guémené fail, he purchases of them, for 12,500,000 livres, three estates for which they had paid only four millions, and in exchange for two estates in Brittany, which bring in barely 33,758 livres, he cedes to them the principality of Dombes which yields an income of 70,000 livres. The Red Book will reveal that 700,000 livres are paid out in pensions to the different members of the house of Polignac, and that nearly two millions in gifts and benefices are received yearly by the house of Noailles. Forgetting that each ill-considered act of generosity bears within it the seeds of destruction, that, as Mirabeau says, "every courtier who obtains a pension of six thousand livres receives the price of six villages," the monarch, whose smallest largess, under the present system of taxation, means a period of fasting for the peasant, is taking bread from the poor to give carriages to the rich. Expressed in brief, the centre of government is the centre of the country's ill; all injustice, all suffering proceed from there as from a swollen and festering sore, and there it is that the pent-up poison will one day overflow. When it does we shall see but the just and inevitable effect of exploiting great privileges selfishly instead of for the benefit of others. The words sire and seigneur mean "protector who nurtures, l'ancien, or the chief who leads."1 For many years, in fact, before the great final catastrophe, France has been in a state of dissolution, simply because the men upon whom her highest privileges are bestowed have forgotten their character as instruments for the public good.

One day when hunting Louis XV, according to Besenval, asked the duke de Choiseul who accompanied him how much he thought the carriage in which they were seated cost. Choiseul replied that he would guarantee to buy one like it for five or six thousand livres, but that his majesty, paying after the manner of kings, with a wide margin in the matter of time, had probably been obliged to give as high as eight thousand. "You have come nowhere near it," answered the king, "the carriage just as you see it cost me a round thirty thousand francs. The stealing that goes on in my household is simply outrageous, but I know of no way to prevent it."

Indeed all connected with the court whether great or lowly had the faculty of gaining high emoluments; in the king's stables were fifty-four horses for the use of the head equerry alone; Madame de Brionne, who discharged some office about the stables during the minority of her son, had the use of thirty-eight, while 215 grooms were told off, and as many horses were set aside for the service of various other persons who had no connection 1 Lord, in old Saxon, signifies "he who nurtures"; seigneur, in Latin of the Middle Ages, signifies l'ancien, or the "leader of the flock."

[1789 A.D.]

with the department. What a swarm of parasites on that one branch of the royal tree! Elsewhere I see that Madame Elizabeth, always so abstemious, consumes in a year thirty thousand francs' worth of fish; meat and game to the amount of 70,000 francs, and candles to the amount of sixty thousand. Mesdames burn a quantity of white and yellow wax candles that cost 215,068 francs, and the bills for lighting of the queen come to 157,109 francs.

At Versailles the street, formerly bordered with booths, is still shown where the valets of the king sold enough scraps from the royal table to feed the entire town. There seems to be not a single article from which the voracious domestic insects do not contrive to extract a rich substance. The king is alleged to drink each year 2,190 francs' worth of orgeat and lemonade; the "chief day and night broth" of Madame Royale, aged two years, costs per year 5,201 livres. Toward the close of the preceding reign, according to Arneth and Geffroy? the ladies in waiting report the following necessities for the dauphine: "Four pairs of shoes a week, three ells of ribbon a day to tie her morning gown, two ells of taffeta a day to cover the basket in which are placed her fan and gloves." Several years earlier the king had expended 200,000 francs annually for coffee, lemonade, chocolate, orgeat, and iced waters, while several persons were inscribed as receiving daily ten to twelve cups and it was calculated, according to Luynes, that the coffee and rolls served each morning to the ladies in waiting came to 2,000 francs a year.

It is easy to conceive that in households thus governed the tradespeople who furnish the supplies are made to wait long for their money, so long, in fact, that they frequently refuse to furnish and retire into temporary hiding. Indeed to cover the loss occasioned by these certain delays they are obliged to charge five per cent. interest on the goods they deliver, so that in spite of the economy practised by Turgot the king still owes in 1778 more than 800,000 livres to his wine merchant, and nearly three millions and a half to his purveyor.1 The same disorder reigns in all the households that surround the throne. "Madame de Guémené owes sixty thousand livres to her shoemaker, sixteen thousand to her paper-hanger, and to the rest of her furnishers she owes in proportion."

Money is a stream which, running carelessly and escaping on all sides, here in secret or tolerated domestic abuses, there in the prodigalities of the masters in houses, furniture, wearing-apparel, hospitality, and pleasures, is perilously near to becoming exhausted. The count of Artois, preparatory to a fête he gives in honour of the queen, causes Bagatelle to be demolished, rebuilt, newly furnished and arranged by a force of nine hundred men working day and night; and as there is not sufficient time to procure the stone, lime, and plaster from afar, he sends patrols of the Swiss guard out upon the highways, to seize all wagons loaded with such materials. The marshal De Soubise expends 200,000 livres in entertaining the king at dinner and over a single night in his country house. The queen, concerning a gift she made the dauphin of a carriage, the gilded panels of which were set with rubies and sapphires, remarked innocently: "The king has increased my allowance by two hundred thousand livres; he surely does not mean that I shall keep them?" 8

1 National Archives, O, 738: "Interest paid to baker, 12,969 francs; to wine merchant, 39,631 francs; and to the purveyor, 173,899 francs."

2 Barbier. Belonging to the marshal De Soubise was a hunting lodge where the king came from time to time to partake of an omelette made of pheasants' eggs, costing 157 livres, 10 sous. 3 According to Madame de Genlis,m Souvenirs de Félicie and Théatre d'Education, a respectable young woman contracts debts in ten months amounting to 70,000 francs: "For a

The Fever of Gaiety and License

[1789 A.D.]

One cannot read a biography or any provincial document of that time without hearing the tinkle of carnival bells. At Mouchaix, at the house of the count de Bédée, uncle of Châteaubriand, "there was music and dancing and hunting and feasting from morning till night; it took capital as well as income to keep it all going." At Aix and Marseilles, in the highest circles of society, we read of nothing but concerts, balls, masquerades, and amateur theatricals, in which the countess de Mirabeau enacted the chief rôles. At Châteauroux, M. Dupin de Francueil kept about him a "troop of musicians, of lackeys, of cooks, of parasites, and horses and dogs, to whom he gave without counting, liking nothing as much as being happy himself and seeing everyone around him happy." At this sport he ruined himself, in the most light-hearted manner possible. Nothing avails to stifle this gaiety-neither age, nor exile, nor misfortune; it still survives even in 1793 in the prisons of the republic.

At Trianon, first before only forty persons, then before an audience of great size, the queen plays Colette in Le Devin de Village, Gotte in La Gageure imprévue, Rosine in Le Barbier de Seville, and Pierrette in Le Chasseur et la Laitière, the rest of the parts being taken by the highest nobles of the court. There is a theatre in the house of Monsieur, two in that of the count of Artois; the duke of Orleans possesses two, the count de Clermont two and the prince of Condé one.

Last and most significant trait of all is the style of play chosen to conclude the favourite entertainment of these fashionable merrymakers for whom life is a perpetual carnival, not a whit less shameless nor unrestrained than that of Venice. Such afterpieces are usually farces taken from the stories of La Fontaine, or the comic Italian authors, and are broad to the point of indecency, so that they are fit to be presented only to an audience of great princes or courtesans ; palates cloyed with the sweetness of orgeat soon come to demand strong rum. The duke of Orleans sings upon the stage couplets of the vulgarest meaning, and one of his rôles is Bartholin in Nicaire; another is Blaise in Jocande. Le Mariage sans curé, Léandre grosse, l'Amant poussif, Léandre Etalon are the titles of some of the pieces written by "Collé, for the amusement of his highness and the court." For one that is only moderately spiced there are ten rank with the strongest seasoning. Some given at Brunoy by Monsieur so far exceed the bounds that the king regrets having come to witness them. "Such license was inconceivable; two ladies who were present were obliged to leave, and, crowning enormity, the queen was actually invited!" Gaiety in these days is a sort of intoxication that impels the drinker to empty the cask of the last drop of wine, and when the wine is gone to drink the dregs.

Not only at private supper parties, or where women of loose life are assembled, but in the highest court circles follies are perpetrated that would disgrace the lowest public-house. In a word society is made up of débauchées who shrink from nothing either in speech or deed. "For five or six months past," writes Madame de Genlism in 1782, "suppers have been followed by a sort of blind man's buff' which ends in a general riot." To these feasts guests are invited two weeks in advance. On one occasion, "tables and chairs were overturned and twenty carafes of water were emptied upon the

small table 10 louis, for a chiffonnière 15 louis, for a bureau 800 francs, for a small writing-desk 200 francs, for a large writing-desk 300 francs; for rings, watch, chain, bracelets, etc., of hair, 9,900 francs."