more than eight times that number, and these were
constrained to follow orders most objectionable and restrictive.
Models to copy were chosen by a jury of art, and such were its
prejudices that but little of interest remained. Ancient religious
suites, and royal ones were disapproved. New orders consisted of
portraits. But if we thought it a prostitution of the art to weave
portraits of Louis XV in royal costume, or Marie Antoinette in the
loveliness of her queenly fripperies, what can be said of the low
estate of a factory which must give out a portrait of Marat or
Lepelletier, even though the great David painted the design to be
copied. The hundred men at the Gobelins must have worked but sadly and
desultorily over such scant and distasteful commissioning.

There were works upon the looms when the Commission began inspecting
the works of art to see if they were proper stuff for the newly-made
Republic to nurse upon. In September, 1794, they found and condemned
twelve large pieces on the looms unfinished, and on which work was
immediately suspended. Of three hundred and twenty-one models
examined, which were the property of the factory, one hundred and
twenty were rejected. In fact, only twenty were designated as truly
fit for production, not falling under the epithets "anti-republican,
fanatic or insufficient." The latter description was applied to all
those exquisite fantasies of art that make the periods Louis XV and
Louis XVI a source of transcendent delight to the lover of dainty
intellectual design, and include particularly the work of Boucher.

The mental and moral workings of the commission on art may be tested
by quoting from their own findings on the _Siege of Calais_, a hanging
by Berthelemy, depicting an event of the Fourteenth Century. This is
what the temper of the times induced the Commission--among whom were
artists too--to say: "Subject regarded as contrary to republican
ideas; the pardon accorded to the people of Calais was given by a
tyrant through the tears and supplications of the queen and child of a
despot. Rejected. In consequence the tapestry will be arrested in its
execution."

The models allowed in this benumbing period were those of hunting
scenes, and antique groups such as the _Muses_, or scenes from the
life of Achilles.

A vicious system of pay was added to the vicious system of art
restriction. And so fell the Gobelins, to revive in such small manner
as was accorded it in the Nine