[71] Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) was the librettist _de mode_ of the period. Aside from his novels he wrote over a hundred libretti, including Meyerbeer’s _Robert_, _Les Huguenots_, _Le Prophète_, and _L’Africaine_; Auber’s _La Muette_, _Fra Diavolo_, _Le domino noir_, _Les diamants de la couronne_; Halévy’s _La Juive_ and _Manon Lescault_; Boieldieu’s _Dame blanche_; and Verdi’s _Les vêpres siciliennes_. [72] Born, Rouen, 1775; died, near Paris, 1834. [73] When only a boy of eleven he composed pretty airs which the _décolletées_ nymphs of the Directory sang between waltzes at the soirées given by Barras, and he survived the fall of the Second Empire. _Les pantins de Violette_, a charming little score, was given at the Bouffes four days before he died. CHAPTER VI THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT: ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND ITS GROWTH Modern music and modern history; characteristics of the music of the romantic period--Schubert and the German romantic movement in literature--Weber and the German reawakening--The Paris of 1830: French romanticism--Franz Liszt--Hector Berlioz--Chopin; Mendelssohn--Leipzig and Robert Schumann--Romanticism and classicism. I Modern history--the history of modern art and modern thought, as well as that of modern politics--dates from July 14, 1789, the capture of the Bastille at the hands of the Parisian mob. Carlyle says there is only one other real date in all history, and that is one without a date, lost in the mists of legends--the Trojan war. There is no political event, no war or rumor of war among the European nations of to-day which, when traced to its source, does not somehow flow from that howling rabble which sweated and cursed all day long before the prison--symbol of absolute artistocratic power--overpowered the handful of guards which defended it and made known to the king, through his minister, its message: ‘Sire, this is not an insurrection; it is a revolution!’