The event of the 2nd of April could not pass without the fan’s comment; we therefore have a medallion profile portrait of Mirabeau, inscribed, ‘Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, Cte de Mirabeau. Mort le 2 Avril 1791.’
A second Mirabeau fan, in the possession of M. Philippe de Saint-Albin, has in the centre a portrait bust, above which is inscribed, ‘Honoré Gabriel Riquetti Mirabeau,’ and ‘Je combattrai les factieux de tous les partis’; on either side of the portrait two medallions, the subjects including Mirabeau as tribune, and the great orator on his deathbed.
Assignat-fans, 1791, refer to the difficulties with respect to paper-money, the woes of the holders of rentes, when paper-money was not worth one-tenth of its face value, and draw a contrast between the Dives of the past and the financier of the present. On the obverse, a medley of assignats of 1791-2; on the reverse, the two Jeans, the one in ragged clothing and poor surroundings, weeping over his assignats, crying, ‘Ils sont tombés’ and
‘Vous êtes Etonnés, je m’en apperçois Bien:
Qu’avec du papier je ne possède Rien’;
the other, ‘Jean qui Rit,’ the speculator, who exchanges one louis d’or for 10,000 livres in assignats, is seated at a table with a large coffer and numerous bags filled with gold. He points to his brother ‘Jean qui Pleure’ and says, ‘Il se désole,’ and ‘A de certaines gens, je ne me suis point fié. Ce Résultat pour moi, vaut mieux que du papier.’
On several assignat-fans the money card, the seven of diamonds, is introduced, its significance being sufficiently obvious.
And royalty in its gilded saloon, what has become of it? How fares it with the poor Louis and his devoted family? That flight from the Rue de l’Échelle in the darkness of the night of the 20th June 1791, when the lady shaded in broad gypsy-hat, tapped, from sheer playfulness, with her badine—‘light little magic rod such as the Beautiful then wore—the wheel of Lafayette’s carriage as it rolled past’; this goes unrecorded, as also the incident in the village of Sainte-Menehould, when Post-master Drouet recognises a familiar face in the lady with the slouched gypsy-hat and the ‘Grosse-Tête’ in round hat and peruke. ‘Quick, Sieur Guillaume, Clerk of the Directoire, bring me a new Assignat! Drouet compares the Paper-money Picture with the Gross Head in round hat there: by Day and Night! you might say this one was an attempted engraving of the other.’[141]
And so event succeeds event—over the final tragedy of the 21st January 1793, no less than over the more piteous scene of October 16, the fan discreetly draws a veil.
