This hall, ineffectually lighted during the day by windows, whose insufficient glimmer was replaced by livid torches when twilight fell, seemed ever shrouded in night. The lamplight sessions were lugubrious, the artificial light seeming really to increase rather than diminish the darkness. No man could see his neighbor; from all parts of the hall indistinct groups of faces seemed to be mocking each other. People passed one another without recognition. One day Laignelot, hastening to the tribune, jostled some one in the descending passage. "I beg pardon, Robespierre," he said. "For whom do you take me?" replied a hoarse voice. "Excuse me, Marat," said Laignelot. Below, one tribune on either Bide of the president was reserved; for, strange to say, privileged spectators were admitted to the Convention. The draperies of these tribunes--the only ones thus adorned--were caught back to the middle of the architrave by golden cords and tassels. The tribunes of the people were bare. The general effect was stern, unconventional, and yet correct. The union of propriety and fierceness is the essence of a revolutionary life. The Hall of the Convention presented a perfect example of what artists have since called the "messidor architecture." It was at once massive and frail. The builders of that period mistook symmetry for beauty. The Renaissance had said its last word under Louis XV., and a reaction had set in. The standards of nobility and purity had been so exaggerated that that which was really noble had degenerated into insipidity, and purity itself had become inexpressibly wearisome. Prudery may exist in architecture. After the dazzling orgies of form and color of the eighteenth century, art had begun a system of diet, and allowed itself only a straight line. This style of improvement resulted in ugliness, and art was thereby reduced to a skeleton,--a phenomenal condition which is the drawback to this kind of wisdom and abstinence; the style is so strict that it becomes meagre. Apart from all political emotion, the mere sight of this architecture made one shiver. Dimly recalling the old theatre, with its garlanded boxes, its ceiling of azure and crimson, its chandelier and girandoles with their prismatic reflections glittering like diamonds, its dove-colored upholstery, the profusion of cupids and nymphs on its curtain and draperies,--all that royal and amorous idyl, painted, sculptured, and gilded, which once irradiated this gloomy place with its smile,--and then casting one's eyes upon these severe rectangular lines, cold and sharp as steel, made one think of Boucher guillotined by David. IV.