Under Napoleon there is another circumstance to be taken into account, namely, that France had a master. When an author attempted any slight deviation from the beaten track, he was promptly checked. Take Raynouard for an example. His play, _Les États de Blois_, which had been performed at St. Cloud, was prohibited in Paris by express order of the Emperor. It was the cannon's turn to speak. The great cannon in front of the Invalides, which was constantly thundering out the intelligence of a new victory, drowned every other voice. And all the hearts full of youthful enthusiasm, all the ardent souls that at another time would have vented their ardour in poetry, all those who were most warmly attached to liberty and to the ideas of the Revolution, crowded to the colours, and endeavoured to forget their longing for liberty and poetry in the intoxication of martial glory. Intellectual life was extinguished as a sweet song sung in a room is stopped by the incessant rattling of heavy carts through the street. A couple of anecdotes may serve to illustrate the noisiness and the depression. To the question, "What do you think at this time?" Sièyes replied, "I do not think." To the question, "What have you done under the Empire for your convictions?" General Lafayette replied, "I have remained standing upright." Two of the arts were susceptible of inspiration by the spirit of the time--the art of the painter and the art of the actor. Gérard painted the battle of Austerlitz, Gros the plague scenes at Jaffa, the battle of Aboukir, and the battle of the Pyramids. Talma, who, as he himself tells, learned for the first time one evening when he was in company with the leaders of the Girondists to understand and to represent Roman Republicans, not as they exist in the imagination of school-boys, but as men--Talma learned from Napoleon to play the parts of Cæsars and of kings. According to the well known story, Bonaparte employed Talma to instruct him in the art of assuming imperial attitudes. The real truth is the reverse of this. It was from Napoleon that Talma learned the authoritative deportment, the short, commanding tone, the imperious gestures which he then reproduced on the stage. When, in 1826, the great actor lay consumed with raging fever, he carefully examined in a mirror the traces of madness and terror on his own face, and, half mad at the time, struck himself on the forehead and cried: "Now I have it! If I ever act again, I shall do exactly this when I play the part of Charles VI." Thus passionately did this man love his art. But from his sick-bed he was not to rise again.