Just as in the most irascible natures a calm always follows violent wrath, so a city, however fiery its passions, cannot always remain in a paroxysm of energy or hate. After terrible popular crises there comes a lassitude which often ends in indifference or scepticism. A revolutionary song, the Marseillaise, for instance, at one moment arouses every one, and sounds like a sublime hymn; at another, like an old-fashioned, worn-out chorus. Orators who a few months ago moved the masses suddenly resemble old actors who cannot draw. Of all cities in the world, Paris is perhaps the ficklest in its tastes and passions.

During the Year VII, Paris was weary of everything except pleasures and military glory. Politics, literature, newspapers, parliamentary debates, had but little interest for a populace which for nearly ten years had seen such varied sights and endured such intense emotions.

As Theophile Lavallee has said: "Every one laughed at the Republic, not merely at its festivals and absurd dresses, but at its wisest institutions, at its purest men."

A goddess of Reason would not have been able to walk through the streets without exciting the jests of the crowd. Patriotic processions began to be looked upon as masquerades. The club orators were regarded as tedious preachers. The vast majority of Parisians cared no more for the Jacobins than for the emigres, and listened no more to the denunciations of the one party than to the lamentations of the other. There was no room for the Republican legend or for the Royalist.

What ruled Paris was not an idea, but selfishness, the love of material joys, scornful indifference for every form of rule except that of the sword. Only a few sincere, honest Republicans, like the upright Gohier, remained true to their principles and determined strenuously to resist every attempt to found a dictatorship; but abandoned by public opinion, which, after having had liberty for its ideal, had got a new idol, and bowed down before force, these men, whose austerity no longer suited the manners of the day, found themselves estranged from all about them.

The Directory, too much tinctured by Royalism to suit the Republicans, too Republican for the Royalists, was no longer taken seriously. It inspired, not wrath, but contempt. The flatterers of Barras paid court to him merely with their lips; and he -- for he was very clear-sighted -- felt that he had come to the end of his tether.

The following lines upon this democratic gentleman were passed from hand to hand:

More than Nero is my viscount a despot;
Strutting beneath his red cap
This king of straw harangues in a tone
At which the idler laughs low in his grime;
'Tis Harlequin, Pantaloon, or Jack pudding,
Putting on the airs of Agamemnon."

The festivities of the Luxembourg had lost all their importance, and every one was watching the horizon where the rising sun should appear.

Paris was not conspicuous for morality. The resuscitation of the religious feeling, of which the publication of the Genie du Christianisme was to be the signal, was yet almost invisible. The worship of the Theophilanthropists, founded by La Reveillere Lepaux, one of the Directors, was a mere burlesque.

The new religion imposed upon its adherents a very short creed. As the Goncourts have said:

"It was a belief of the compactest form. Its temples were distinguished by the inscription: 'Silence and Respect; here God is worshipped.' It recommended virtue by means of handbills. With compilations from Greek and Chinese moralists, Theophilanthropy had pilfered the wisdom of nations to make of it a moral code. It rested on a library instead of on a tabernacle. Its Pater Noster, as proposed by one of the members of the sect, had expunged the phrase, who art in heaven, because God is omnipresent; also the phrase, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us, because that is equivalent to saying imitate us; and finally the phrase, lead us not into temptation, on the ground it changes God into a devil.

Every one -- Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Mohammedans -- could be Theophilanthropists, preserving whatever they wanted of their religion. The feast days of the new worship were those of the Foundation of the Republic, of the Sovereignty of the People, of Youth, of Married People, of Agriculture, of Liberty, of Old Age. The priests of Theophilanthropy, by means of their prayers for all the acts of the government, secured official favor. The Catholic churches were allotted to them in common with their original possessors, and the same churches were open from six till eleven in the morning for the rites of Catholicism, and after eleven for those of the Theophilanthropists.

But the sect of the hunchbacked Director -- Mahomet, the Theophilanthropist, La Reveillere-laid-peau, as he was called -- was to last but four years at the most, and to succumb to ridicule. This grotesque imitation of Christianity could no longer please the impious more than the devout, and wags were going to call this Aesop in office the pope of the citoyens filoux-en-troupe [gang of sharpers]."

Certainly it was not from this new sect that a reform in morals could come; other springs were demanded for the purification of society. Scandal became the order of the day. From the dregs of society there rose a swarm of upstarts, the product of speculation and immorality, who made a display of their cynical habits, their tasteless luxury, their grotesque conceit.

The Republic possessed numberless Turcarets. These upstarts tried to outdo the old farmers-general. Royalists and Republicans vied in viciousness and frivolity. Women's fashions became abominably indecent. The parody of antiquity knew no bounds.

"By the restoration of Olympus," the Goncourts have said, "the Impossibles of the new France derived so much benefit that they tried gradually to introduce nakedness. The robe fell lower upon the bosom, and arms which had been covered to the elbow, being suspected of being ugly arms, were bared to the shoulder. It was with the legs and feet as it was with the arms. Jewelled thongs were fastened about the ankles,

The diamond alone should set off
The charms which wool dishonors, and gold rings were worn on the toes."

For some time even the chemise was abandoned as old-fashioned. "The chemise," it was said, "mars the figure, and makes awkward folds; a well-made juste lost its grace and precision by means of the waving and awkward folds of this old garment.... Women have worn chemises for nearly two thousand years; it was an absurdly old fashion."

Nothing was more fatal to the health than those fashions which required the sun of Greece, and were yet worn by our French Aspasias through the fogs and frost of our winters. Dr. Delessarts said, towards the end of 1798, that he had seen more young girls die since the fashion of gauze dresses came in, than in the forty years before.

The extravagant fashions were destined to last no longer than the sect of Theophilanthropists. The poet Panard represented Venus, at the last council of Olympus, as opposing these too transparent draperies:

The charms that everywhere
Without veil are admired to-day,
By dint of speaking to the eye,
Leave nothing to say to the heart."

Women have put on their chemises again, and decency resumed its rights. Society gradually reorganized itself, but slowly and with difficulty. A few aristocratic drawing-rooms opened, but only to ridicule the new institutions, to sneer at men and things.

The official world, in which appeared a few ambitious gentlemen, was crowded with intriguers, speculators, parasites, the flatterers of every form of power. If the drawing rooms were rare, theatres, subscription balls, public gardens, cafes, tea-gardens, abounded. The Cafe Very, the balls of Richelieu, of Tivoli, of Marbeuf, the Pavilion of Hanover, Frascati, were fashionable, and the motley throng that filled them did not prevent good society crowding them for amusement. The families of the victims did not mind meeting the executioners. Why hate one another, after all? Who knows, the foes of yesterday may be the allies of the morrow! Royalists and Jacobins had a common enemy, the Directory, which had persecuted each in turn. Conquerors and conquered, proscribers and proscribed, met in the same dance.

People of the old regime plunged into amusement like the rest, with hearty zeal, but yet with some alarm. Who could pass through the Place de la Revolution without recalling the scaffold? Bloodstains still seemed to mark the stones. And the 18th Fructidor, the transportation to Cayenne, the dry guillotine, as it was called, made the blood run cold.

However short a Parisian's memory, those events were of too recent a date for him not to dread the future. The survivors of the Jacobins had opened the Club du Manege. It had not the renown of the old clubs, but it was still alarming, and the orators' voices sounded like a funeral knell. The enemies of liberty and friends of the approaching dictatorship never forgot to recall the red spectre against the Republic. Without suspecting it, all parties were preparing to play Bonaparte's game. This man, who bewitched France, was to persuade all, without saying a word, that he was the protector and saviour of every one. Everything was to crumble into ruins; only one man would be left.

Of the Republican legend, only the military side survived. Those who were tired of speeches were eager for bulletins of victories. The Parisian public became more interested in the shores of the Nile than in those of the Seine. News from Bonaparte became more interesting, as English cruisers made it even more difficult and rarer.

As Madame de Stael said, "letters dated Cairo, orders issued from Alexandria to go to the ruins of Thebes, near the boundaries of Ethiopia, augmented the reputation of a man who was not seen, but who appeared from afar like an extraordinary phenomenon.... Bonaparte skilfully utilizing the enthusiasm of the French for military glory, allied their pride with his victories as with his defeats. Gradually he acquired with all people the place the Revolution had held, and gathered about his name all the national feeling which had made France great before the world."

The period of incubation of the dictatorship is a most interesting study. Paris of the Year VII explains Paris of the Consulate and of the Empire. The change was made in morals and manners before it appeared in politics. There is something strange in the fluctuation of the Parisian between liberty that is license and order which is despotism.

This illogical and fickle populace is in turn the most ungovernable and the most docile in the world. Everything lies in knowing whether it is in a period of agitation or of repose. When it is agitated, it would break any sword, any sceptre. When it is at peace, it asks its masters only to guard its slumbers.