. On that day the
galley slaves were treated like heroes. The emblems adopted were a
colossal galley, ornamented with flowers, and the convicts' head gear,
that hideous red bonnet in which Dumouriez had already played the
buffoon, and which was presently to be set on the august head of Louis
XVI. The soldier galley slaves, whose chains were kissed with
transports by a swarm of harlots, came forward wearing civic crowns.
What a difference between the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative
Assembly! Under the one, a grand expiatory ceremony on the
Champ-de-Mars had honored the soldiers slain at Nancy, and the National
Guards had worn mourning for these martyrs of duty. Under the other,
it was not the victims who were lauded, but their assassins. A goddess
of Liberty in a Phrygian cap was borne in a state chariot. The
procession halted at the Bastille, the Hotel de Ville, and the
Champ-de-Mars. The mayor and municipality of Paris were present in
their official capacity. The _Ca ira_ was sung in a frenzy of
enthusiasm. Soldiers and public women embraced each other. It was
David who had {119} designed the costumes, planned the chariot, and
organized the whole performance,--David, the revolutionary artist who
was destined by a change of fortune to paint the portrait of a Pope and
the coronation of an Emperor.

In 1791, Andre Chenier and David, then friends, and saluting together
the dawn of the Revolution, had celebrated with lyre and pencil the
"_Serment du Jeu de Paume_"[1] Consecrating an ode to the painter's
magnificent tableau, the poet exclaimed:--

Resume thy golden robe, bind on thy chaplet rich,
Divine and youthful Poesy!
To David's lips, King of the skilful brush,
Bear the ambrosial cup.

How he repented his enthusiasm now! What ill-will he bore the artist
who placed his art, that sacred gift, at the service of anarchical
passions! With what irony the same pen passed from dithyramb to satire!

Arts worthy of our eyes, pomp and magnificence
Worthy of our liberty,
Worthy of the vile tyrants who are devouring France,
Worthy of the atrocious dementia
Of that stupid David whom in other days I sang!

On the very day of the fete the young poet had the courage to publish
in the _Journal de Paris_ an avenging satire, which branded the
shoulders of the ex-galley slaves as with a new hot iron. The sweet
{120} and pathetic elegiast, the Catullus, the Tibullus of France,
adde