Operatic kings and queens were suppressed by the Republic. Not only were they forbidden to appear on the stage, but even their names were not to be pronounced behind the scenes, and the expressions _côté du roi_, _côté de la reine_, were changed into _côté jardin_, _côté cour_, which, at the Theatre of the Tuileries, indicated respectively the left and right of the stage, from the stage point of view. But although, at first, all pieces in which kings and queens figured were prohibited, the dramas of _sans-culotte_ origin were so stupid and disgusting that the Republic was absolutely obliged to return to the old monarchical _repertory_. The kings, however, were turned into chiefs; princes and dukes became representatives of the people; seigneurs subsided into mayors; and substitutes more or less synonymous were found for such offensive words as crown, throne, sceptre, etc. In a new Republican version of "Le Déserteur," as represented at the Opera Comique, _le roi_, in one well-known line, was replaced by _la loi_, and the vocalist had to declaim "_La loi passait, et le tambour battait aux champs!_" A certain voluble executant, however, is said to have preferred the following emendation: "_Le pouvoir exécutif passait, et le tambour battait aux champs!_" The scenes of most of the new operas were laid in Italy, Prussia, Portugal--anywhere but in France, where it would have been indispensable from a political, and impossible from a poetical, point of view to make the lovers address one another as _citoyen_, _citoyenne_. On the 19th of June, 1793, the directors of the Opera having objected to give a gratuitous performance of the "Siege of Thionville," the Commune of Paris issued the following edict:--"Considering that for a long time past the aristocracy has taken refuge in the administration of various theatres; considering that these gentlemen corrupt the public mind by the pieces they represent; considering that they exercise a fatal influence on the revolution: it is decreed that the 'Siege of Thionville' shall be represented gratis, and solely for the amusement of the _sans-culottes_, who, to this moment, have been the true defenders of liberty and supporters of democracy." Soon afterwards it was proposed to shut up the Opera, but Hébert--the ferocious Hébert, better known as Le père Duchesne--undertook its defence, on the ground that it procured subsistence for a number of families, and "caused the agreeable arts to flourish." Whatever the Opera may have been under the Reign of Terror, it was conducted infinitely better in one important respect than under the ancient _régime_. [Illustration: FRÉDÉRIC LEMAÎTRE.]