This threat was not quite so vain as it might seem. A list of twenty-two persons engaged at the Opera (twenty-two--the fatal number during the Reign of Terror), had been already drawn up by Hébert, as a sort of executioner's memorandum. When he was in a good humour he would show it to the singers and dancers, and say to them with easy familiarity; "I shall have to send you all to the guillotine some day. Two reasons have prevented me hitherto; in the first place you are not worth the trouble, in the second I want you for my amusement." These reasons were not considered quite satisfactory by the proscribed artists, and Beaupré, a comic dancer of great talent, contrived by various humorous stratagems (one of which, and doubtless the most readily forgiven, consisted in intoxicating Hébert), to gain possession of the fatal list; but the day afterwards the republican _dilettante_ was always sufficiently recovered from the effects of his excessive potations to draw up another one exactly like it. * * * * * [Sidenote: DANGEROUS MELODIES.] At the head of the catalogue of suspected ones figured the name of Lainez, whom the republicans could not pardon for the energy and expression with which he had sung the air _Chantez, célébrez votre reine_, at the last performances of _Iphigénie en Aulide_; and that of Mademoiselle Maillard, whose crime has been already mentioned. At this period it was dangerous not only to sing the words, but even to hum or whistle the music of such airs as the aforesaid _Chantez, célébrez votre reine_, _O Richard o mon roi!_ _Charmante Gabrielle_, and many others, among which may be mentioned _Pauvre Jacques_--an adaptation of Dibdin's _Poor Jack_, in which allusions had been discovered to the fate of Louis XVI. Indeed, to perform any kind of music might be fatal to the executant, and thus Mesdemoiselles de Saint Léger, two young ladies living in Arras, were executed for having played the piano the day that Valenciennes fell into the hands of the enemy. * * * * * Mademoiselle Maillard, much as she detested the republicans, was forced, on one occasion, to sing a republican hymn. When Lainez complimented her on the warmth of her expression, the vigour of her execution, she replied, "I was burning with rage at having to sing to such monsters." * * * * * Vestris, the Prince de Guéméné of the Vestris family, he who had been accused by his father of wishing to produce a misunderstanding between the Vestrises and the Bourbons, had to dance in a _pas de trois_ as a _sans culottes_, between two nuns! Sophie Arnould, accused (and not quite unreasonably), of aristocratic sympathies, pointed indignantly to a bust of Gluck in her room, and asked the intelligent agents of the Republic, if it was likely she would keep the bust of Marat were she not a true republican? * * * * *