que le
peuple de Corinthe concentre son indignation.~.~.~.

A man in the pit thereupon rose and called out:

_Si le peuple eut besoin d'etre provoque pour s'elever contre la
tyrannie, c'est une injure faite au peuple francais que de lui offrir
cet exemple de faiblesse et d'ineptie. A bas la toile!_

The cry was taken up; a riotous scene followed; and presently: on
pousse l'horreur jusqu'au point de forcer Chenier a bruler {276}
lui-meme, sur le theatre, le fruit de huit mois de travaux et de
veilles.

Art, like literature, languished during the Revolution, or
meretriciously touched herself up with the fashionable rouge. Before
and after are great periods, but for the moment art seems to have lost
its cunning; the artist, like David, turns politician. Fragonard and
Greuze both survived to see the Empire, but lost their vogue. The
touch of Greuze could hardly be appreciated in the age of Danton; the
luscious sweetness of Fragonard was in like case; both of these great
artists were ruined by the Revolution and died in poverty. Instead of
these graceful masters of the false pastoral taste of the decaying
century, a robust group of military painters arises, Vernet, Charlet,
Gericault, and later Raffet, most brutal, but most candid portrayer of
the armies of the Republic. The false classical style, inherited from
the period of Louis XVI, is metamorphosed by David and Gros, becomes
inflated, declamatory, vapid, and wooden. David's immense picture, the
most insistent canvas now hanging in the Louvre, representing the three
Horatii swearing to Rome that they would conquer or die, gives the note
of the period. False sentiment, {277} mock heroics, glittering
formula, lay figure attitude, all are there.

A few artists succeeded in carrying the elegance of the 18th century
through the storm into the period beyond, notably Prud'hon, who has
been called the Watteau of the Revolution. His portraits of the women
of the Bonaparte family, Josephine, Hortense, Pauline, have all the
grace and fascination of the earlier age, merge with it the abandon of
the Directoire period, and touch the whole with the romanticism and
individualism of the coming century. In terrible contrast with these
lovely and alluring women of the new age, is the grim figure caught in
a few masterly strokes by David, as Marie Antoinette, proud and
unbending as ever, but shorn of all the glory of Versailles, her face
haggard, her hair gray, disheve