Tost, tost, venez femmes danser
Apres les hommes incontinent,
Et gardez vous bien de verser,
Car vous danserez vrayment;
Mon cornet corne bien souvent
Apres les petis et les grans.
Despecte vous legierement,
Apres la pluye vient le beau temps.
These lines are differently given in the various printed copies of the Danse Macabre.
This figure is not to be confounded with an alabaster statue of Death that remained in the church-yard of the Innocents, when it was entirely destroyed in 1786. It had been usually regarded as the work of Germain Pilon, but with greater probability belonged to Francois Gentil, a sculptor at Troyes, about 1540. It was transported to Notre Dame, after being bronzed and repaired, by M. Deseine, a distinguished artist. It was saved from the fury of the iconoclast revolutionists by M. Le Noir, and deposited in the Museum which he so patriotically established in the Rue des petits Augustins, but it has since disappeared. It was an upright skeleton figure, holding in one hand a lance which pointed to a shield with this inscription:
Il n’est vivant, tant soit plein d’art,
Ne de force pour resistance,
Que je ne frappe de mon dart,
Pour bailler aux vers leur pitance.
Priez Dieu pour les trespassés.
It is engraved in the second volume of M. Le Noir’s “Musée des monumens Francais,” and also in his “Histoire des arts en France,” No. 91.
DANSE AUX AVEUGLES.
There is a poetical work, in some degree connected with the subject of this dissertation, that ought not to be overlooked. It was composed by one Pierre Michault, of whom little more seems to be known than that he was in the service of Charles, Count of Charolois, son of Philip le Bon, Duke of Burgundy. It is intitled “La Danse aux Aveugles,” and the object of it is to show that all men are subject to the influence of three blind guides, Love, Fortune, and Death, before whom several persons are whimsically made to dance. It is a dialogue in a dream between the Author and Understanding, and the respective blind guides describe themselves, their nature, and power over mankind, in ten-line stanzas, of which the following is the first of those which are pronounced by Death:
Je suis la Mort de nature ennemie,
Qui tous vivans finablement consomme,
Anichillant à tous humains la vie,
Reduis en terre et en cendre tout homme.
Je suis la mort qui dure me surnomme,
Pour ce qu’il fault que maine tout affin;
Je nay parent, amy, frere ou affin
Que ne face tout rediger en pouldre,
Et suis de Dieu ad ce commise affin,
Que l’on me doubte autant que tonnant fouldre.
Some of the editions are ornamented with cuts, in which Death is occasionally introduced, and that portion of the work which exclusively relates to him seems to have been separately published, M. Goujet[138] having mentioned that he had seen a copy in vellum, containing twelve leaves, with an engraving to every one of the stanzas, twenty-three in number. More is unnecessary to be added, as M. Peignot has elaborately and very completely handled the subject in his interesting “Recherches sur les Danses des Morts.” Dijon, 1826. octavo.