The Hussar hat.
nades, and at such of the theatres as remained open, braving the citizens in carmagnoles and red caps, and the knitting hags of the guillotine. But, at how great a risk was this done ! Fashion did not dare to struggle any longer, the poor thing hid its head under its wing, and hoped for a better day.
The guillotine was always at work, interrupted only from time to time by some idyllic festival, tlie fete of the Supreme Being, of Agriculture, or of Old Age, with rows of young girls in white, goddesses of Liberty, choruses of old men and boys, charming pastorals, spectacles which sweetly stirred the hearts of the good Marat and the sensitive Robespierre. Sand was strewn over the blood for the day, on the morrow the red stream beç»;an to run acjain.
Ninth Thermidor ! For love of Citizeness Thérèse Cabarrus, a star about to rise, Tallien had braved death, then hanging over every head. He had defeated Robespierre, and flung him in his turn into the impassive arms of the goddess Guillotine.
Mme. Tallien became Notre-Dame de Thermidor, she who saves by the sovereign power of beauty !
A deep sigh of relief was heaved by all France, and immediately the repressed antl terrorized powers lifted up their heads ; forth came dress and fashion, with luxury, with frivolity, and even folly, with gladness, and laughter. Yes, there was a frantic longing for laughter after so much blood and weeping.
The ' Incroyables,' and the ' Merveilleuses,' who had already appeared before the Terror, displayed themselves in crowds on the promenades and boulevards, and Fashion, whose head had no doubt been turned by the Kobespierre régime, though still pale with fear, began at once to revel in countless follies.
While the fops belonging to the 'gilded youth ' of Paris, and appropriately called ' Incroyables,' with their high-collared coats, their huge cravats and the twisted sticks that were so necessary for their defence against Jacobins and terrorist sectionaries, imitated English fashions, the ' Merveilleuses ' were unanimous in the worship of antiquity. For some years there were no more Parisians, all the women were Greek and Roman.
Straight gowns without waists, mere sheaths bound around the bosom by a girdle, short in front to let the foot be seen, slightly trained at the back, such was the attire of the ' Merveilleuses.' Nothing but antiquity was known; everything had begun over again.
During the Terror, modesty had been forgotten ; this Athenian costume was merely a second chemise, and might have passed, but for the jewellery that was worn with it, for a symbol of the poverty of that time of ruin, when the louis d'or was worth eight hundred livres in assignats. It was a tunic of transparent lawn, which clung to the wearer's body with each movement. In addition to this, the diaphanous tunics of the leaders of fashion were slit down the sides from the hips.
Notre-Dame de Thermidor, Thérèse Cabarrus, now Citizeness Tallien, the Queen of Fashion, appeared at Frascati, dressed, or, rather, undressed, in the classic style \ her Athenian cjown showed her IcsTS clad in flesli-coloured tights with golden circlets for garters,
antique buskins, and rings on each toe of her statue-like foot.
In the salons, in the summer-gardens at the promenades, the only wear was this antique gown, open above and below, worn with ' Carthaginian ' chemises, or even without any chemise at ail, sandals and buskins fastened by narroAv red bands, gold circlets set with precious stones, ' arrangements ' of tunics and peplums, corset-belts a couple of inches wide close under the bosom and adorned with brilliants.
The fluttering gowns allowed the legs to be seen, or even, when not slit open at the side, were raised above the knee, and, fastened with a cameo brooch, boldly displaying the left leg. Very little sleeve was worn, a mere strap, or even no sleeves at all, the edges of the gown were drawn together by cameos on the shoulders, and the arms were laden with bracelets.
As it was impossible to put pockets into these flimsy tunics, the ladies adopted the use of the 'balantine,' or 'reticule'' (which was immediately pronounced ' ridicule '), an old name for a little bag ornamented with spangles or embroidery, and shaped like a hussar's
MERVEILLEUSH DU DIRECTOIRE.
sabretaclie ; iu this the handkerchief and jturse were carried, Jacob tlie Bibliophilist rehites that on a certain evening, in a fashionable salon under the Directory, everybody being eloquent in admiration of a costume so truly antique that nothing except the mode of the Garden of Eden could be more so, the fortunate wearer laid a wager that it did not weigh two pounds. Proof was given, the lady retired into a boudoir, and her entire costume with the trinkets was found to weigh little over one pound.
This neo-Athenian dame might count herself very much dressed, for others found means to be still less encumbered with clothes, and actually ventured to exhibit themselves in a costume called ' The female Savage,' which consisted solely of a gauze chemise over pink fleshings with golden garters.
Women actually walked in the Champs-Elysées in ' sheaths ' almost entirely transparent, or even with the bosom completely bared, and these women were not courtesans.
but belonged to tlic otficial ' woiiJ ' of the day, and were friends of Joséphine de Beauharnais.
This was thoughtlessness rather than immodesty, a jDassing fit of insanity, the delirium of pleasure after furious madness and the delirium of blood !
The ' Merveilleuses,' who had defied the guillotine, also defied disease. Nevertheless, many of these foolish half-naked women were seized witli pleurisy and inflammation of the lunos on leavinjf crowded ball-rooms and salons, after dancing, with no more protection from the cold of the night than a thin fichu or a shawl no larger than a scarf. Having taken their costume fashions from Athens, these semi-draped fine ladies borrowed their head-dresses from Greek statues, and wore their crisply-curled hair in a net, the tresses and plaits having jewels inserted in them. But the ' rage ' was for fair-haired wigs. Mme. Tallien had thirty, of every shade of light hair. These wigs, which were sliglitly powdered, had been abhorred and proscribed by the Jacobins; after Thermidor came their tiiiniiph, the 'peruke blonde' was thenceforth a symbol of the coimter-revolution.
For a while hair was dressed ' à la Victime,' or ' à la Sacrifiée ; ' being combed up at the back and brouglit forward on the forehead in wild locks. This gu-illotine style of headdress, with a blood - red ribbon round the neck, and a shawl of the same colour on the shoulders, was indispensable for all those who appeared at the famous and ghastly ' Bal des Victimes/ to which neitlier man nor woman was admitted who could not prove that either of his or her parents, or some near relation, had died upon the scaffold in the Terror.^
"Paole d'honneu victimée, ces dames sont déliantes!" said the 'Incroyables,' in the fashionable slang, and with the lisp à la mode, to each new invention, more 'delicious' and more ' antique ' than the preceding, of Mme. Nancy and Mme. Raimbout, a pair of learned and artistic dressmakers, who employed sculptors to assist them in devising methods of draping ^ See nute, Appendix, p. 264. more and more Greek, and folds increasingly Roman.
Roman fashions, wliicli were somewhat less light and loose, were adopted by ladies who shrank from the too literal transparency of the Flora and the Diana tunics.
Roman gowns w^ere worn by the ladies of the official world, who considered themselves bound to exercise a certain discretion, but the two worlds effected a fusion. Light and frivolous ' Athenians,' remains of the old and parvenus of the new society, army contractors or suddenly enriched speculators, ' muscadins ' and ' muscadines,' victims and persecutors, gilded youth, the army, politics, and finance, all these formed the most marvellous of mixtures after the great shock, and rejoiced in the happiness of living after the great slaughter, notwithstanding the troubles of the present, and the uncertainty of the future.