t under
worse conditions, and with no hope but in the help of Russia.

XXII

AFTER THE TERROR

It remains for us to pursue the course of French politics from the
fall of the Terrorists to the Constitution of the year III., and the
close of the Convention in October 1795. The State drifted after the
storm, and was long without a regular government or a guiding body of
opinion. The first feeling was relief at an immense deliverance.
Prisons were opened and thousands of private citizens were released.
The new sensation displayed itself extravagantly, in the search for
pleasures unknown during the stern and sombre reign. Madame Tallien
set the fashion as queen of Paris society. Men rejected the modern
garment which characterised the hateful years, and put on tights. They
buried the chin in folded neckcloths, and wore tall hats in protest
against the exposed neck and the red nightcap of the enemy. Powder was
resumed; but the pigtail was cut off straight, in commemoration of
friends lost by the fall of the axe. Young men, representing the new
spirit, wore a kind of uniform, with the badge of mourning on the arm,
and a knobstick in their hands adapted to the Jacobin skull. They
became known afterwards as the _Jeunesse Doree_. The press made much
of them, and they served as a body to the leaders of the reaction,
hustling opponents, and denoting the infinite change in the conditions
of public life.

These were externals. What went on underneath was the gradual recovery
of the respectable elements of society, and the passage of power from
the unworthy hands of the men who destroyed Robespierre. These, the
Thermidorians, were faithful to the contract with the Plain, by which
they obtained their victory. Some had been friends of Danton, who, at
one moment of the previous winter, had approved a policy of moderation
in the use of the guillotine. Tallien had domestic as well as public
reasons for clemency. But the bulk of the genuine Montagnards were
unaltered. They had deserted Robespierre when it became unsafe to
defend him; but they had not renounced his system, and held that it
was needful as their security against the furious enmity they had
incurred when they were the ruling faction.

The majority in the Convention, where all powers were now
concentrated, were unable to govern. The irresistible resources of the
Reign of Terror were gone, and nothing occupied their place. There was
no working Constitution, no settl