New Year's Day having recovered its rights, other traditions thought to be forgotten were not long in following suit; first and foremost the Carnival, another Lazarus recalled to life from among the masks. But before putting such a turbulent lad back into circulation the police were seized with misgivings. As the feast days of the year VIII drew near, Dubois, the new Prefect of Police, began by issuing a total ban on masks and masked balls, Thanks to God, and no doubt to the First Consul, these severities were soon modified, and in the end it was decided that five balls, four of them masked, should take place at the Theatre de la Republique, i.e. the
The first, which coincided with the old mid-Lent, attracted an unbelievable crowd. As tickets only cost six francs, the whole of the Faubourg Saint-Denis arranged to meet there, which somewhat diminished the elegance of the attendance. All the same, people were able to point out to one another a number of celebrities in the boxes, whom they thought they could recognize under their disguise. Here a pretty woman. very like Josephine, there another who must be Mme
Recamier, allowing the Prince of Wurtemberg to snatch one of her rings as a souvenir; further on an Oriental in a turban with a strong likeness to Barras - a post-coup d'etat Barras, cut out for the role of 'Turk's head 7 . 1
Another year of patience, and the Carnival would be allowed to descend from the Opera into the street, where it would soon recover the wealth of its old attractions. Decorated carts, sumptuous or comic, would be seen proceeding along the boulevards: the gods of Olympus surrounded by cupids, the Three Estates of 1789 in caricature, or a little later, the famous Doctor Gall astride a donkey, above a sea of cardboard skulls.
By way of varying these processions and restoring that of mid-Lent, there would be the Apotheosis of the Laundresses, or the March of the Fatted Ox, the triumph of the butcher-boys; 2 Paris would never lack invention. Carnivals would succeed one another, each contributing some novelty, but all ending with the same ceremony: the funeral, by candle-light, of the god of the festival, a tragi-comic farce taken so seriously by the actors that one of them, after playing the part of the defunct Carnival forty-five times, was to play it the forty-sixth time on his own account, and leave one bier only to lie down for good on another. 3
The popular amusements which the feast days would bring back to the streets of Paris usually had a gayer conclusion, but at the sight of all these pirouetting Harlequins and Pierrots, foreigners on a visit to the capital took it now and then for c the country of the mad'. The expression was that of a Swiss lady, Mme Cazenove d'Arlen; and Reichardt, the German already mentioned, had the same feeling when he saw the street urchins of the Rue Saint-Honore whirling a life-size scullion at the end of a rope, or thirty pseudo-Spaniards amusing themselves by tossing a lay figure in a blanket up to the third story.
Our tourist was particularly struck by the traffic jam on the main boulevards, Amid the crowd of onlookers and masked figures, the confusion of gigs, barouches and delivery vans, he was astounded to see diligences and even hearses. But lost in this crowd, with two women to look after, he was surprised to have suffered no insult or ill treatment. 'So long as you adopt the tone of good humour the French are accustomed to,' he says, 'you can always get on with the Parisian populace/
1 Scapegoat. [Translator.]
2 This was not re-established until 1805,
"This was a certain Ricord, a bill-poster of the Rue de la Huchette, who, after appearing in the Carnival in the classic ceremony of the funeral, was found dead at his home next morning.
Twelve years earlier this same populace-no doubt because it had not been approached in that 'tone of good humour'-had made the Revolution. Now, without quite realizing it, it was in the act of unmaking it, putting, every day, a little more of the past into the present. While the old festivals had now come back into fashion, certain anniversaries dear to the Jacobins were no longer celebrated; neither the lugubrious 21st January, nor the 10th August, nor the 9th Thermidor, given up for opposite reasons: it was a reminder of the proscriptions, and people preferred to forget all that.
Another imposition people longed to be rid of was the Decadi. For the moment it was the only day of rest allowed by republican law, the only day marking officially the cessation of work, the idleness of government offices, the closing of shops. To plant a bed of lettuce or sell two sous worth of string on that day was to behave as a bad citizen, and those who chose a Sunday to go and drink new wine in the armours of Suresnes were committing a still more serious crime. The Decadi possessed, moreover, the monopoly of marriage ceremonies; one could only be married on that day - married for good that is.
Everybody knew by experience the hardships inflicted by these little tyrannies, and they remembered that the good old Sunday had the advantage of returning every week, fifty-two times a year, that is, instead of thirty-six. A gain of so many days for the workers in town and country, for the humble mass of the lower class, whose Sunday programme consisted of a twin delight: a shave and a white shirt.
It would have been pleasant to give them satisfaction, but the Government was afraid of forsaking revolutionary principles too soon. For this reason, during the first months of the
Consulate, the police registers still record a number of prosecutions against Paris shopkeepers who had not observed the tenth as a rest day. It took seven months for the Council of State to solve the difficulty by a decree. In future the official day of rest would be obligatory only for civil servants, the rest of the citizens would be free to fold their arms on Sunday.
The game now half won was soon to be wholly so. Finally supplanted by its rival, the Decadi was not long in retiring to sleep in the firmament of old moons. And from one end of France to the other the refrain would be sung:
Nous supprimons le decadi, Avec sa kyrielle en i ... Le dimanche Ton fetera, Alleluia!
One reform brings another in its train. Now that Sunday had returned, the old calendar dividing the year into twelve months had of necessity to be re-established. But the contest threatened to be a fierce one, for there were two opposing doctrines on the subject:
"The revolutionary calendar*, said those in favour of it, "has reason and the metric system on its side.'
'Its predecessor', said those against, "is based on the usage of centuries and almost universal custom.'
"It has been the calendar of French history/ adds a correspondent of the Journal des Debats, 'it is therefore the one best suited to an epoch such as ours. The man that has restored to our country its happiness and its glory, its old festivals and its old virtues, would like the people of all countries to connect recognized dates with the victories, the great feats of arms marking the course of a life so precious to the French.... And I myself, Mr. Editor, would like the Spanish and the Germans to know that I had the honour of writing this letter to you on September 25,1803.'
The author of this note was ahead of events, for the Gregorian calendar, the "dear old man', as people called it, had not yet recovered its legal existence. 1
It became official on January 1, 1806, for the New Year's Day of Austerlitz.
It was used more and more, however, in everyday conversation. The Church employed it to announce its ceremonies, and the Gazette de France to advertise theatrical performances. It was beginning to reappear, too, in the almanacs. The old familiar saints it brought with it found themselves in the company of a rather unexpected colleague, mentioned by Julie Talma: