The bill announced Phèdre and the Chien du Jardinier,—The Gardener's Dog. With one voice the audience demanded the hymn dear to the muscadins and the gilded youth, the Réveil du peuple,—The Awakening of the People.
The curtain rose and a little man, short and fat, took the stage; it was the celebrated Lays. He sang in his fine tenor voice:
Peuple français, peuple de frères!...
Such storms of applause broke out as set the lustres of the chandelier jingling. Then some murmurs made themselves heard, and the voice of a citizen in a round hat answered from the pit with the hymn of the Marseillaise:
Allons, enfants de la patrie....
The voice was drowned by howls, and shouts were raised:
"Down with the Terrorists! Death to the Jacobins!"
Lays was recalled and sang a second time over the hymn of the Thermidorians.
Peuple français, peuple de frères!...
In every play-house was to be seen the bust of Marat, surmounting a column or raised on a pedestal; at the Théâtre Feydeau this bust stood on a dwarf pillar on the "prompt" side, against the masonry-framing in the stage.