Even in the days of the Revolution, for kindred reasons, poetry had disappeared. A few poets still wrote tragedies in the old style; only they transformed Voltaire's philosophical tragedy into political tragedy, exploiting the republics of Rome and Greece for the benefit of the new French Republic, which discovered the prototypes of its heroes in the men whom it called the sansculottes of Rome and Athens. But the interest of these plays could not compare with the interest of the great dramas of the National Assembly and the Convention. Just as in ancient days the gladiatorial combats destroyed men's appreciation of plays in which no one was really killed, now the fifth acts of tragedies seemed flat and stale in comparison with the concluding scenes in the meetings of the Convention, during which the vanquished were led off to the scaffold. The dagger of Melpomene could not, in the long run, compete with the guillotine. Who by means of a poetical work could produce an emotion at all corresponding to what the audience felt on the occasion of the impeachment, sentence, and death of the King and Queen? Who could devise stage plots to compare with Robespierre's and Danton's plots against Vergniaud and the Girondists, or the snares that were afterwards laid for Robespierre? We have evidence that this was the feeling of contemporaries. Ducis, the famous translator of Shakespeare, replies to a friend who has been urging him to write for the theatre: "Do not talk to me of tragedies! We have tragedies in every street. I have but to put my foot out at the door to step into blood up to the ankles." That there is not much exaggeration in these words is proved by a letter written by Chaumette in 1793 to the municipal authorities of Paris, in which he complains that short-sighted persons were constantly exposed to the unpleasantness of stepping into human blood.
Under Napoleon there is another circumstance to be taken into account, namely, that France had a master. When an author attempted any slight deviation from the beaten track, he was promptly checked. Take Raynouard for an example. His play, _Les États de Blois_, which had been performed at St. Cloud, was prohibited in Paris by express order of the Emperor. It was the cannon's turn to speak. The great cannon in front of the Invalides, which was constantly thundering out the intelligence of a new victory, drowned every other voice. And all the hearts full of youthful enthusiasm, all the ardent souls that at another time would have vented their ardour in poetry, all those who were most warmly attached to liberty and to the ideas of the Revolution, crowded to the colours, and endeavoured to forget their longing for liberty and poetry in the intoxication of martial glory. Intellectual life was extinguished as a sweet song sung in a room is stopped by the incessant rattling of heavy carts through the street. A couple of anecdotes may serve to illustrate the noisiness and the depression. To the question, "What do you think at this time?" Sièyes replied, "I do not think." To the question, "What have you done under the Empire for your convictions?" General Lafayette replied, "I have remained standing upright."