declined to keep the cart waiting. "After all, it would but give needless pain to my brother. Let us set out."

In his pastoral days Rabaut had been noted for being very comforting to the dying. We trust that he was now able to comfort his fellow-sufferer-Kersaint, the deputy who had resigned his seat after the king's execution, "to sit no longer with men of blood." Both victims died firmly, though in their case, as in that of so many others, to the bitterness of death there was added the bitterness of public hate and ridicule. The muscadins among the spectators-the young men of the better class, whose sympathies might have been expected to be Girondin-only set up a laugh at Rabaut's unshaved visage, and a storm of groans followed, which had not ceased when his head fell. Even without this needless cruelty, death must have been hard to bear, harder than for a Royalist, who might glory as in a martyrdom. But a Girondin had so loved the Republic !

Peyssac and his wife were guillotined for having sheltered one who was hors la loi. Madame Rabaut, at Nîmes, learned her husband's death from the cry of a newspaper-seller, and, maddened by grief, she shot herself sitting on the edge of a well, so that drowning completed the work of the pistol. Old Paul Rabaut, who had wandered thirty years with a price on his head, and had never been taken, was now pounced upon partly as father to an emigrant, partly as being, if not a priest, next door to one. Too infirm to walk, he was set on an ass, and led through a shouting crowd to the citadel of Nîmes, built by Louis XIV. to overawe the Protestants. Without hope or desire to live, he applied himself to console his fellow-captives. The fall of Robespierre released him, but only to die in three months, and to be laid in his own cellar, Christian burial being still prohibited. Rabaut-Pommier lay long months in the Conciergerie, a prey to all the ailments brought on by damp. He was at last recalled to the Convention with the surviving Girondins. After sitting among the Ancients and holding a sous-prefecture, he finally subsided into a pastor of the Reformed Church at Paris, and died peaceably in 1820, leaving two printed sermons of thanksgiving, one for "Napoleon the Deliverer," and the other for the Bourbon Restoration. It is to be feared that he had become something of a trimmer. There was more of the spirit of Rabaut Saint-Étienne in his youngest brother, Dupuis, who, to see the last of his father, braved the law against returned emigrants, who, when Conventionnel

1 About 1880 the cellar was excavated, the bones were identified, in size and contour, with the police signalement of 1750, and the spot was marked by a memorial tablet.

agent at Toulouse, took upon him to stay the execution of a Royalist, and who met his death, in 1808, in snatching a child from under the hoofs of a runaway horse. The child, Gache by surname, lived to be chef de division of the Prefecture of the Gard in 1853, and bore testimony in the local Courrier to Rabaut-Dupuis' devotion.

Thus ends Rabaut Saint-Entiene's history, that of every "moderate" man who rashly allies himself with the destructive forces which will indeed sweep away his enemies, but which will next turn upon him as being an enemy himself. For Rabaut, indeed, there is the excuse that the circumstances were new, and that he could not reasonably be expected to foresee the results. have foreseen that the tyranny of the Church would give place to a tyranny of irreligion, and that, in the words of a modern French writer, "our Protestantism would pay the blood-tax twice over."

Least of all could he

In his personal history, perhaps the most remarkable thing is that he should, even for a moment, have been counted the equal of Mirabeau-Mirabeau, who stands for ever the central figure of the early Revolution! Rabaut Saint-Étienne has but a few lines in general history, and a niche among the worthies of Nîmes. His co-religionists, indeed, attempt to make him out the ideal Christian pastor, a height to which he never really attained. He entered the ministry without a vocation (in the eighteenth century, and in the circumstances of French Protestantism, it would be hard to blame him); and though the power of consoling the dying implies some true religious fervour, still his success as a pastor seems to have been due more to intellectual than to spiritual gifts. In the second stage of his career the philosophe is more prominent than the Protestant ; but to the end he blends with the pseudo-classical cant of the Revolution recollections of the Scriptural prophecies of a reign of peace on earth, and his enthusiasm is that of a Fifth-Monarchy man. The ex-Jacobin Prud'homme, indeed, censures him as an adventurer who, "believing neither in the Trinity nor the Sacraments," had yet assumed the position of "a little patriarch of the Protestant Church"; while a Catholic partisan, the Abbé Barruel, shows him to us as a leading Freemason (in the French Catholic vocabulary Freemasonry means aggressive infidelity), plotting the destruction of all religion and society, and fiercely maintaining at the dinner-table that all the education a people needed was contained in the Declaration of Rights. But Rabaut's very nickname of "priest" proves that his conduct was not ostentatiously unclerical. As a politician, he was not wiser or better than his party. He had the faults of his school

-the readiness to make light of lawlessness so long as it was on his own side, and, while condemning war as the cruel sport of kings, to cry out for war to deliver Europe from kings. It is difficult to reconcile his early disavowal of "the ridiculous project to republicanise our holy and venerable monarchy" with some later expressions about "unmasking kings throughout the world, and calling them to account for their long series of outrages." But no act of cruelty, of treachery, or of greed can be proved against Rabaut individually. That he was a lovable man the testimony of those who knew him abundantly shows. We might quote in his favour Boissy d'Anglas, who shared his house at Nîmes for ten years, saw him every day, and every day liked him better. We might quote Riouffe ("Mémoires d'un Détenu "): "Chénier, Rabaut, Lavoisier, Barnave, names dear to arts, science, and eloquence, who can efface you from my memory ?” We might quote the pastor Marron of Paris, who tells how, in prison, he was washing up the dishes, when a lad employed about the place began talking to him, and burst into tears at hearing that he had been a friend of Rabaut Saint-Étienne. "Is it possible? Oh, sir, if I had known that, you should have washed no dishes." And taking the cloth from his hand, he finished the work himself, and came every day to do it, all for the sake of Rabaut Saint-Étienne. We might quote Rabaut-Pommier's éloge of his brother: "Dear and illustrious victim, receive the homage of thy mourning colleagues. France now prospers under a Republic such as thou hast desired for her. Thou art avenged, generous sufferer; and we are comforted." But these were sympathisers in politics and religion. Rather let us end with an extract from Dampmartin, a Catholic and Royalist. Despite the rococo style, and the epithets, which now sound almost burlesque, of homme sensible (man of feeling), and "friend of humanity," it is impossible not to recognise the accents of unfeigned regret and affection.

It is only by a reasoned effort that I resist the desire to pay a tribute to the memory of Rabaut de Saint-Étienne. The undue restlessness of an otherwise virtuous father, and zeal for his religion, threw him among the leaders of a faction; but, like a clear stream traversing foul and pestilential marshes without altogether losing its purity, this man of virtue and feeling always retained many marks of his excellent character; his gentle eloquence penetrated the hearers with emotion. Often, after he had spoken, was he designated as "the orator who unites so much esprit and good taste with such profound and varied knowledge; the true friend of humanity."

E. PERRONET THOMPSON.

TH

THE CLAQUE.

HOSE among the many thousands who visited Paris last year and were able to devote a little time to other things than the Universal Advertising Agency on the Champ de Mars, must have observed that the theatrical claque is still a flourishing French institution. Nor is there reason to suppose that the public have any desire to dispense with this unnecessary and discreditable accompaniment of dramatic performances. The interested vanity of actors, authors, and managers prevails over the arguments of MM. Emile Augier and Alex. Dumas fils. The claqueur has conquered, and well may he boast: J'y suis et j'y reste! The Théâtre Italien is the only playhouse where the chevaliers du lustre have not their allotted places.

But, though purely French in its modern organisation, the claque, or salaried applause, was resorted to, on a large scale, by the ancient Romans; hence the nickname Romains given to the claqueurs at Paris. Suetonius tells us that, when Nero sang in public, 5,000 trained men, led by Burrhus and Seneca, thundered their plaudits. They might needs be trained men, for approval was of various degrees and kinds bombi, a sound like the droning of bees; imbrices, imitating the patter of falling rain; testæ, the clashing of broken jugs. This last was the invention of Nero himself, and was produced by striking the fingers of the right hand on the palm of the left. Another variety of applause was obtained by the snapping of countless fingers; and, according to Seneca, satisfaction was also shown by the shaking of the robe. Aurelian used to have strips of linen and other materials distributed among the people for this purpose, and we can well imagine the stirring effect produced by this universal waving of bright colours in the densely thronged amphitheatre. Although Nero is said to have imposed a death penalty on all spectators who did not applaud him, it is probable that the curatores, or leaders, and juvenes, as their men were called, were appointed chiefly with a view of ensuring approbation at convenient moments. Tacitus complains of the unseemly interruptions of country people. And upholders of the French claque have defended it on similar grounds.

Hence it is not surprising that, as at Rome, so at Paris, applauding in all its branches has been taught as an art, with the result that: "Le public au théâtre règne et ne gouverne plus." So, at least, wrote M. Eugène Despois soon after the establishment of permanent claqueurs in Paris playhouses at the beginning of the present century.

Before that time there had been in France, as elsewhere, occasional demonstrations in favour of plays or actors. A claque of grands seigneurs and grandes dames was organised by the Duchess of Bouillon in support of the Phèdre of Pradon and directed against Racine's famous tragedy of the same name. But it met with no success, and Alphonse Karr has gone so far as to assert that in no instance has a claque ensured the fame of a bad play. A paid cabale seems to have been requisitioned for the first time by a poet named Dorat, in order to secure the approval of his own works. But such victories cost dear, and the dramatist was ruined by the very means he employed

to secure success.

Some time afterwards, De la Morlière, a musketeer and knight of the St.-Esprit, went about offering his services to authors and actors, and appears to have satisfied his patrons ; but by the irony of fate he who had so largely contributed to the popularity of many failed to accomplish that of his own works; and he died in great poverty. Further evidence of the fact that amateurs and even hirelings were but broken reeds to lean on for public support, is forthcoming in the words of Beaumarchais' immortal barber. Figaro exclaims: “En vérité, je ne sais pas comment je n'eus point le plus grand succès, car j'avais rempli le parterre des plus excellents travailleurs des mains comme des battoirs. J'avais interdit les gants, les cannes, tout ce qui ne produit que des applaudissements sourds."

Writing in 1807, Prud'homme tells us of a certain "pittite," surnamed Monsieur Claque, who received a salary for his powerful hand-clapping "that language of universal currency among Parisians." Three years later, the whole body of David's art-students, to the number of seventy or eighty, formed a claque to support Mdlle. Leverd in opposition to Mdlle. Mars; and at the time of the rivalry between another pair of actresses at the Comédie FrançaiseMdlle. Georges and Mdlle. Duchesnois--the "entrepreneurs de succès dramatiques" had fully organised their train-bands. One after another all the houses in Paris submitted to their yoke, and if the Théâtre Italien is the solitary exception to the rule, and has no claque, it has, according to a French wit, at all events a clique to support it.