tinct--the
flash and snap of the guillotine. To those happy listeners, though, no
such sound was audible. Their speculations went another way. All was
roseate, all was charming as the coaches dashed through the narrow
streets of Paris, carrying their finely-powdered ladies and gentlemen,
in silks and jewels, to the assemblies of the night. Within, the candles
sparkled, and the diamonds, and the eyes of the company, sitting round
in gilded delicate chairs. And then there was supper, and the Marquise
was witty, and the Comte was sententious, while yet newer vistas opened
of yet happier worlds, dancing on endlessly through the floods of
conversation and champagne.

CHAPTER VI

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

The French Revolution was like a bomb, to the making of which every
liberal thinker and writer of the eighteenth century had lent a hand,
and which, when it exploded, destroyed its creators. After the smoke had
rolled away, it became clear that the old regime, with its despotisms
and its persecutions, had indeed been abolished for ever; but the spirit
of the _Philosophes_ had vanished likewise. Men's minds underwent a
great reaction. The traditions of the last two centuries were violently
broken. In literature, particularly, it seemed as if the very
foundations of the art must be laid anew; and, in this task, if men
looked at all for inspiration from the Past, it was towards that age
which differed most from the age of their fathers--towards those distant
times before the Renaissance, when the medieval Church reigned supreme
in Europe.

But before examining these new developments more closely, one glance
must be given at a writer whose qualities had singularly little to do
with his surroundings. ANDRE CHENIER passed the active years of his
short life in the thick of the revolutionary ferment, and he was
guillotined at the age of thirty-two; but his most characteristic poems
might have been composed in some magic island, far from the haunts of
men, and untouched by 'the rumour of periods'. He is the only French
writer of the eighteenth century in whom the pure and undiluted spirit
of poetry is manifest. For this reason, perhaps, he has often been
acclaimed as the forerunner of the great Romantic outburst of a
generation later; but, in reality, to give him such a title is to
misjudge the whole value of his work. For he is essentially a classic;
with a purity, a restraint, a measured and accomplished art which would