But a very different ideal from that of good form was about to burst upon French national life. Rousseau’s highly colored writings had carried with them the germs of the great Revolution. A few of the best observers were able to see that conditions could not stay as they were, that human emotions, long inarticulate, must soon spring to violent expression. The lovely romance, _Plaisir d’amour_ (1785), mingling with such an innocent military song as _Malbrouk’s s’en va-t-en guerre_, could show no hint of the completely changed state of the public emotions five years later. In 1789 the storm broke. Europe realized that the people had entered the institution of government. And soon, too, in their crude way, the people had begun to enter the institution of French musical art. A certain fiddler-beggar, playing daily for _sous_ on the _Pont Neuf_, one Ladré by name, picked up a lively dance tune, heaven knows where, which he played daily on his fiddle and presently published under the name, _Carillon national_. And some one, even more obscure to history, set words to it, beginning with the immortal phrase which Benjamin Franklin had repeated continually in France in reference to the American Revolution--_Ça ira!_ (‘It is coming!’). These words shall not here be called poetry. Yet they had certain of the supreme virtues of poetry, namely, simplicity of language and utter sincerity of statement. ‘_Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!_’ sang the mob as it led its captives to their death. ‘_Les aristocrats à la lanterne_’ (‘Hang the aristocrats!’). Such sentiments were not exalted. Their statement was far from delicate. Similar sentiments toward the peasants had many a time been expressed with infinite grace and good taste in the court of Louis XVI. But when the mob had achieved the ability to think ‘Hang the aristocrats’ and to make a song of it and to sing that song aloud on the streets a new force had entered into the life of men. And, what is more to our purpose, a new force had entered into the art of song. Never before had emotion been expressed so directly or so violently. The tune is something like our ‘Dixie,’ though without its joyousness. It is a fiddler’s tune, distinctly unsingable, especially since it was ignorantly arranged so as to lie in places far above the compass of the untrained voice. But its spirit was that of flowing blood and clattering iron. To this day _Ça ira_ produces an effect of emotional savageness which can hardly be duplicated in all song literature.