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We were more prepared, wrote Nodier,
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It was evident then that France, so soon as she had freed herself from her kings, so soon as she had spoken the word
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Republic, must take the _Roman_ Republic as her pattern. People lived in an atmosphere of antiquity; the great citizens of Rome and Athens were ranged with the French National Convention; Scævola, Scipio, Cato, Cincinnatus, were the idols of the populace. The speakers in the council cited the ancients in preference; Madame Vigée-Lebrun gave _soupers à la Grecque_.
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Everything was ordered according to the _Voyage d'Anacharsis_--garments, viands, amusements, and the table, all were Athenian. Madame Lebrun herself was Aspasia; M. l'Abbé Barthélémy, in a Greek dress with a laurel wreath on his head, recited a poem; M. de Cabierès played the golden lyre as Memnon, and young boys waited at table as slaves. The table itself was set entirely with Greek utensils, and all the viands were actually those of ancient Greece. Children were given Greek and Roman names. People called themselves
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Romans.
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cried Coulon at the death of Mirabeau. Paris is Rome. In the theatre the bust of Brutus is set opposite that of Voltaire, and the actor says:
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And as with the bust of Brutus in the theatre, that of Mucius Scævola appears in the cafés, which Parisian journalists, still full of remembrances of ancient history studied in the gymnasium, liken to the Lyceum and the Porch. In every case ancient Rome is set up as the exemplar. The Parisian collection of engravings on copper possesses a reproduction of the guillotine, with the inscription: _A similar machine was used for the execution of the Roman, Titus Manlius_. A valet committed suicide, and quoted the illustrious example of Seneca. Had it been possible, people would have gladly thrown themselves back eighteen hundred years into the past, with all its grandeur, its simplicity, and its ruthlessness. Political and social forms did not suffice; even the implements and costume of the ancients were again brought into honour. Furniture put on antiquarian shapes; the walls were decorated _à la Grecque_. The lively frivolity of _rococo_, with its freaks and fancies, was no longer adapted to the boudoir of the age of revolution, now transformed into the political council-room. Twists and curves were no longer permitted: everything had to be straightforward, logical, ungenerous, inexorable. Men went clad wretchedly, with red Phrygian caps and no breeches. Women and girls cast aside their ordinary attire and put on straight, falling drapery, discarded their heeled shoes and bound sandals round their feet, shook the powder from their locks and tied their hair in a Greek knot.
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Dressed in white raiment without adornment, but decked in the virtue of simplicity,