Paris, December 1821

When, before the Revolution, I read the history of civil disturbances among different nations, I could not understand how people had managed to live through such times. I was astonished that Montaigne could write so cheerfully in a castle where he could not even stroll about without risking abduction by bands of Leaguers or Protestants.

The Revolution taught me how possible it is to live under such conditions. Moments of crisis intensify human life. In a society that is dissolving and recomposing itself, the struggle between two spirits, the clash of past and future, the mingling of old ways with new, create a transient mixture that leaves no time for boredom. Passions and characters, set free, display an energy unimaginable in a well-ordered city. Violations of the law, freedom from duties, customs, and conventions, even danger itself, heighten the attraction of such disorder. The human race, as if on holiday, strolls through the streets, freed from its masters and restored for a moment to its natural state; it feels no need for a civic bridle until it takes upon itself the yoke of the new tyrants whom such license brings forth.

I can think of no better way to describe the society of 1789 and 1790 than by comparing it to the architecture of the reigns of Louis XII and François I, when the Greek orders began to be combined with the Gothic style. Or rather, I would compare it to the collection of ruins and tombs from every century, piled together pell-mell after the Terror in the cloisters of the Petits-Augustins—except that the ruins of which I speak were alive and constantly changing.

In every corner of Paris there were literary gatherings, political meetings, and theatrical performances. Future celebrities wandered through the crowds still unknown, like souls on the banks of Lethe before they emerged into the light. I saw Marshal Gouvion-Saint-Cyr perform in Beaumarchais's La Mère coupable at the Théâtre du Marais. People went from the Club des Feuillants to the Club des Jacobins, from balls and gambling houses to the crowds at the Palais-Royal, from the galleries of the National Assembly to the open-air galleries of the streets. Popular delegations, cavalry pickets, and infantry patrols moved in every direction.

Beside a man dressed in the French fashion, with powdered hair, a sword at his side, a hat under his arm, leather shoes, and silk stockings, walked another with closely cropped, unpowdered hair, wearing an English frock coat and an American cravat. In the theaters, actors announced the latest news, and the pit burst into patriotic songs. Topical plays drew the crowds: a priest would appear on stage, and the people would shout, “Calotin! Calotin!” while the priest replied, “Messieurs, Vive la Nation!” Everyone hurried to hear Mandini and his wife, Viganoni, sing with Rovedino at the Opéra-Buffa, only minutes after hearing “Ça ira” shouted in the streets. They went to admire Madame Dugazon, Madame Saint-Aubin, Carline, little Olivier, Mademoiselle Contat, Molé, Fleury, and the young sensation Talma, fresh from witnessing Favras go to the gallows.

The promenades of the boulevard du Temple and the boulevard des Italiens—nicknamed “Coblentz”—and all the paths of the Tuileries Garden were crowded with fashionable women. Grétry's three young daughters shone there, as white and pink as their dresses. All three would soon be dead. “She fell asleep forever,” Grétry said of the eldest, “sitting on my lap, as beautiful as she had been in life.” A multitude of carriages churned through the muddy crossroads where the sans-culottes splashed about, while the beautiful Madame de Buffon could be seen sitting alone in a phaeton belonging to the Duc d'Orléans, parked outside the door of some club.

Everything elegant and refined in aristocratic society gathered at the Hôtel de La Rochefoucauld, at the soirées of Mesdames de Poix, d'Hénin, de Simiane, and de Vaudreuil, or in those few salons of the high magistracy that were still open. In the houses of M. Necker, M. le Comte de Montmorin, and various other ministers gathered, together with Madame de Staël, the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, and Mesdames de Beaumont and de Sérilly, all the figures of the new France and all the freedoms of its new manners.

A cobbler in the uniform of the National Guard knelt down to measure your foot; a monk who dragged a black or white robe along the ground on Friday wore a round hat and a layman's coat on Sunday; a clean-shaven Capuchin read the newspaper in a tavern; and among a circle of frivolous women sat a grave-looking nun, an aunt or sister driven from her convent. Crowds now visited these monasteries, opened to the world, as travelers in Granada walk through the abandoned halls of the Alhambra, or linger at Tivoli beneath the columns of the Temple of the Sibyl.

For the rest, there were numerous duels and love affairs, prison liaisons and mysterious encounters among the ruins, beneath a tranquil sky, amid the peace and poetry of nature. There were countless distant, silent, solitary walks, punctuated by undying oaths and unspeakable affections, accompanied by the dull tumult of a fleeing world and the distant noise of a collapsing society that threatened to fall and crush every possibility of happiness placed in the path of events.

When someone disappeared from sight for twenty-four hours, no one could be certain of seeing him again. Some followed the revolutionary path; others contemplated civil war; others departed for Ohio, sending ahead plans for châteaux to be built among the savages; others went to join the princes. They did everything cheerfully, often without a sou in their pockets. The Royalists claimed that one of these mornings an act of parliament would put an end to everything, while the patriots, equally careless in their hopes, proclaimed the imminent arrival of an age of peace, happiness, and liberty.

And this was how they thought of Robespierre and Mirabeau! “It is as little within the power of any earthly faculty to keep the French from talking,” says L'Estoile, “as it is to bury the sun in the earth or drown it in a well.”

The Tuileries Palace, transformed into a great prison filled with captives, towered above these festivals of destruction. Even the condemned enjoyed themselves while awaiting the cart, the shears, and the red shirt that had been hung out to dry. From the windows they could gaze upon the dazzling illuminations of the Queen's circle.

Pamphlets and newspapers multiplied by the thousands. The satires, poems, and songs of the Actes des Apôtres answered the Ami du peuple and the Modérateur, published by the Royalist club and edited by Fontanes. In the political section of the Mercure de France, Mallet-Dupan wrote in opposition to La Harpe and Chamfort, who contributed to the literary section of the same paper.

Champcenetz, the Marquis de Bonnay, Rivarol, Boniface Mirabeau the Younger—a Holbein of the sword who, in the Rhineland, raised a legion called the Hussars of Death—and Honoré Mirabeau the Elder: all these men amused themselves by drawing caricatures over dinner and composing a Little Almanack of Great Men. After dinner, Honoré would go and proclaim martial law or seize the property of the clergy. He would spend the night with Madame Le Jay after announcing that he would not leave the National Assembly except under the pressure of bayonets.

Equality conferred with the devil in the quarries of Montrouge and then returned to the Jardin de Monceau to preside over orgies organized by Laclos. The future regicide had in no way fallen short of his forefathers: twice prostituted, drained by debauchery, he delivered himself into the hands of ambition. Lauzun, already wrinkled and withered, dined in his little house at the Barrière du Maine with dancers from the opera, who sat carelessly intertwined with Messieurs de Noailles, de Dillon, de Choiseul, de Narbonne, de Talleyrand, and several other elegant men of the day, of whom two or three mummies still remain.

Most of the courtiers famous for their immorality during the final years of Louis XV's reign and throughout the reign of Louis XVI had enlisted beneath the tricolor flag. Almost all had fought in the American War and stained their ribbons with Republican colors. The Revolution made use of them while it was still of moderate proportions, and some even became its first generals.

The Duc de Lauzun—the romantic lover of Princess Czartoryska, the womanizer of the highways, a Lovelace who had possessed this one and that one, according to the chaste and noble language of the court—became the Duc de Biron and commanded the forces of the Convention in the Vendée Wars.

What a pity! The Baron de Besenval, the mendacious and cynical chronicler of corruption in high society, a fly buzzing around the trivialities of the old dying monarchy, that tedious baron compromised by the affair of the Bastille, was saved by M. Necker and Mirabeau only because he was Swiss.

What miserable material! Why had such men become involved in such events? As the Revolution advanced, it disdainfully abandoned these frivolous apostates of the throne. It had needed their vices; now it needed their heads. No blood was beneath its contempt—not even the blood of Madame du Barry.