and to go to the theatre, to enjoy music and open-air cafes and
promenades in the Palais Royal.

New fashions in dress made their appearance, milliners produced
fresh "creations," and jewellers were not idle. A grim sense of
humour, born of the very intensity of ever-present danger, had
dubbed the cut of certain tunics "tete tranche," or a favourite
ragout was called "a la guillotine."

On three evenings only during the past memorable four and a half
years did the theatres close their doors, and these evenings were
the ones immediately following that terrible 2nd of September the
day of the butchery outside the Abbaye prison, when Paris herself
was aghast with horror, and the cries of the massacred might have
drowned the calls of the audience whose hands upraised for
plaudits would still be dripping with blood.

On all other evenings of these same four and a half years the
theatres in the Rue de Richelieu, in the Palais Royal, the
Luxembourg, and others, had raised their curtains and taken money
at their doors. The same audience that earlier in the day had
whiled away the time by witnessing the ever-recurrent dramas of
the Place de la Revolution assembled here in the evenings and
filled stalls, boxes, and tiers, laughing over the satires of
Voltaire or weeping over the sentimental tragedies of persecuted
Romeos and innocent Juliets.

Death knocked at so many doors these days! He was so constant a
guest in the houses of relatives and friends that those who had
merely shaken him by the hand, those on whom he had smiled, and