ing this Danse
Macabre,--it is known that it was the most important mural painting of
the cemetery of the Innocents, and it is now attributed to Jehan
d'Orleans, _valet de chambre_ and painter in ordinary to Charles VI,
familiar companion of Jean, Duc de Berry. The first record that is known
of it is found in the memoirs of a contemporary, printed under the title
of _Journal de Paris sous Charles VI et Charles VII, a l'annee 1424_,
and which gives this "ITEM: _l'an iiiie xxiv fut faite la Danse
Macabre a Saint-Innocent, et fut commencee environ le moys d'aoust et
achevee au careme ensuivant_,"--begun in August, 1424, and finished in
the following Lent. In the library of the city of Grenoble is the only
known copy of a work illustrating this painting with wood-cuts,--"_cy
finit la d[=a]se macabre imprimee par ung nomme Guy Marchant demeurant
en Champ Gaillart a Paris le vingt-huitiesme iour de septembre mil
quatre c[=e]t quatre vings et cinq_,"--printed by Guy Marchant, Champ
Gaillart, Paris, September 28, 1485. The earliest known wood-engraving
is the German one of Saint Christopher, dated 1423,--one year before the
execution of the Danse Macabre on the walls of the Innocents. The famous
Dance of Death in Bale was not executed till 1439, and Holbein--to whom
it has been attributed--was not born till 1498. The Paris dance is thus
much the earlier, and in the reproduction given by Guy Marchant the
varying buffoonery of the grotesque figures of death is remarkable,--they
laugh, they become astonished, they become enraged,--the "serious
contemplation," which they were to inspire, seems far away to our modern
eyes, so conventional in their conception only of a conventional horror,
silent, menacing, without any shade of humor.

Another image of this mediaeval Death has been preserved to our day. This
is the small alabaster statue, formerly known as the _Mort
Saint-Innocent_; now preserved in the museum of the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts. It stood under the fifth arcade, when issuing from the
church, in the charnier of "Messieurs les Martins," and had been
executed by their order. It was kept enclosed in a box of which the
church wardens had the key, and on All-Saints'-day it was exhibited to
the people until noon of the next day. Although attributed to Germain
Pilon, it is probably anterior to his time, and is now considered to be
the work of a sculptor named Francois Gentil, a native of Troyes. As
shown in the illustration, on page