* * * * * Some readers have, probably, been unable to reconcile two facts mentioned above with respect to the Opera under the Convention:--1. That the performers were not paid; and 2. That the public attended the representations in immense numbers. The explanation is very simple. The money was stolen by the Commune of Paris. Gardel, the ballet-master, required fifty thousand francs for the production of a work composed by himself, on the subject of _William Tell_. Twice was the sum amassed from the receipts and professedly set apart for the unfortunate _William Tell_, and twice the money disappeared. It had been devoted to the requirements of patriots in real life. * * * * * Danton, Hébert, Chaumette, Henriot, Robespierre, all administrators of the Opera; Dubuisson, Fabre d'Eglantine, librettists writing for the Opera, and both republicans had been executed during the Reign of Terror. Chamfort, a republican, killed himself to avoid the same fate. Coquéau, architect, musician, and writer, the author of a number of musical articles produced during the Gluck and Piccinni contests, was guillotined in the year II. of the republic. The musician, Edelman, after bringing a number of persons to the scaffold, including his patron and benefactor, the Baron de Diétrich, arrived there himself in 1794, accompanied by his brother. In the same year Despréaux, leader of the first violins at the opera in 1782, and member of the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1793, killed himself from remorse. Altogether, sixteen persons belonging to the opera in various ways killed themselves, or were executed in 1792, '93, and '94. After the fall of Robespierre, the royalists for a time ruled the theatres, and avenged themselves on all actors who had made themselves conspicuous as revolutionists. Trial, a comic tenor, who had made a very serious accusation against Mademoiselle Buret, of the Comédie Italienne, which led to her execution, was forced to sing the _Réveil du Peuple_ on his knees, amid the execrations of the audience. He sang it, but was thrown into such a state of agitation that he died from the effects. Lays, whose favourite part was that of "Oreste," in _Iphigénie en Tauride_, had, in the course of the opera, to declaim these verses:-- "J'ai trahi l'amitié, J'ai trahi la nature; Des plus noirs attentats J'ai comblé la mesure."