362 SANSCULLOTISED LITERATUKl'. IN FRANCE. 



King Demos declines speaking anything else but the language 

 of Billingsgate. What is the good of polite manners, of choice 

 expressions, of severely strict syntax ? All this is offensive in his 

 nostrils and smacking of aristocracy. Perfect equality requires 

 that one should express oneself without ceremony, and call a 

 spade a sj^ade, and that nothing remind one of bygone times of 

 abject slavery, when one was forced to refine upon one's speech 

 so as to please and flatter the great. And since it has appeared 

 that his roaring oaths do agonize and sting the fair ci-devant to 

 the quick, he makes it a point to raise his voice and bespangle his 

 style with (|uite a number of those gems from the gutter. The 

 picturescjue is not precluded ; far from it. When French stoops 

 to be trivial, it becomes only so much the more flowery and para- 

 bolic and figurative. The figures are of the spiciest and the most 

 indecorous— there is no doubt about that ; but the)^ are as a rule 

 extremely droll and funny, with a ring in them that reminds one 

 of the guft'aw of Rabelais. The "esprit gaulois." cornered by Mrs. 

 Grundy and whisked out of the drawing-rooms, where, not so 

 very long ago, it was looked upon with genial complacency, had 

 taken refuge with the people. And what a host of quaint meta- 

 phors do we find in the mouths of the sansculottes ! The horrid 

 tumbril of the scaft'old becomes with them the " vis-a-vis de 

 Maitre Sanson " ; or " le carrosse a trente-six portieres " ; the guil- 

 lotine receives the speaking name of " le rasoir national " ; they 

 even hurl their pitiless jokes at the woeful cortege of the con- 

 demned victims as they pass by, and shout : " lis vont mettre la 

 tete a la fenetre," " lis vont faire la bascule," " Les voila en route 

 pour essa}'er la cravate a Capet," " Eternuer dan-; la sac," " De- 

 mander I'heure au vasistas," etc., etc. 



One man, of all others, bestirs himself to deal out and dis- 

 seminate this semi-argot, of which the French populace are so 

 fcnid. That man is Hebert, the editoi of a scurrilous pap^^r 

 called Lc Pcrc Diichcsnc. His contributions to this publication 

 were mostly sketches from real life and i)ortraits after nature. 

 He studies his models on the wharf and in the market-places, as 

 ]\h^liere had studied his marquises at the Court, his medical 

 characters in the boudoirs, his scholars in the haunts of learning, 

 The paper became notoriously popular to a marvellous extent. 

 Its " Lettres bougrement patriotic|ues," a title of which as a mild 

 translation, this might be given, " Confoundedly Patriotic 

 Letters," littered most ostentatiously everybody's table, even 

 those of the most fervid royalists, whom they served as certifi- 

 cates for public-spirited civism. Tt was incontestably a stroke of 

 genius in Hebert to create this original press, which was destined 

 to ere long get the whip-hand over public opinion. There is no 

 doubt but that it was greatly instrumental in bringing about 

 the condemnation of Louis XVL and later on that of the Giron- 

 dins. whom Hebert used to style " ces crai:)auds du Marais." It 

 w^as sufificient that the Perc Diich.csiie burst into a passion — and 

 this happened fairly often — to forthwith see a movement set on 

 foot in favour of the measures which it either demanded or advo- 



