siasm broke forth. The hymn of the
country, destined also to be the hymn of terror, was found. A few
months afterward the unfortunate Dietrich went to the scaffold to the
sound of the very notes which had their origin on his own hearth, in
the heart of his friend, and in the voices of his children."

[Illustration: Rouget de l'Isle Singing the Marseillaise. From
painting by I. A. A. Pils.]

It was on April 25th that De Lisle's hymn was sung at Dietrich's house.
The next day it was copied and arranged for a military band, and on
April 29th it was performed by the band of the Garde Nationale at a
review. On June 25th, a singer named Mireur sang it with so much
effect at a civic banquet at Marseilles that it was at once printed and
distributed to the volunteers of the battalion just starting for Paris,
which they entered by the Faubourg St. Antoine on July 30th, singing
their new hymn. It was heard again on August 10th, when the mob
stormed the palace of the Tuileries. From that time the "_chant de
guerre pour l'armee du Rhin_," as it had been christened, was known as
the "Chanson" or "Chant de Marseillais," and finally as "La
Marseillaise." The original edition contained only six couplets; the
seventh was added by the journalist Dubois.

Rouget de Lisle's authorship of the music has been often contested, but
it is proven by the conclusive evidence contained in the pamphlet on
the subject, by his nephew, published in Paris, in 1865. Schumann has
used the "Marseillaise" in the overture to "Hermann and Dorothea," and
also in his song of the "Two Grenadiers."

Its author, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was born at Montaigu,
Lous-le-Saulnier, in 1760. Entering the school of Royal Engineers at
Mezieres in 1782, in 1789 he was a second lieutenant and quartered at
Besancon. Here, a few days after the fall of the Bastille, on July
14th, he wrote his first patriotic song to the tune of a favourite air.
The next year found him at Strasburg, where his "Hymn to Liberty," set
to music by Pleyel, was sung at the fete of September 25, 1791. One of
his pieces, "Bayard en Bresse," produced at Paris in 1791, was not
successful. Being the son of royalist parents and one of the
constitutional party, Rouget de Lisle refused to take the oath to the
constitution abolishing the crown, and was therefore cashiered,
denounced, and imprisoned, not escaping until after the fall of
Robespierre. It is told that as he fled through a pass