The stanza finished, the whole assembly took up the refrain.
Since the days of the Coup d'Etat, the Marseillaise had been banned in
France, the official imperial air being "Partant pour la Syrie," a
military march composed by the Emperor's mother, Queen Hortense, with
words by Count Alexandre de Laborde, who therein pictured a handsome young
knight praying to the Blessed Virgin before his departure for Palestine,
and soliciting of her benevolence that he might "prove to be the bravest
brave, and love the fairest fair." During the twenty years of the third
Napoleon's rule, Paris had heard the strains of "Partant pour la Syrie"
many thousand times, and, though they were tuneful enough, had become
thoroughly tired of them. To stimulate popular enthusiasm in the war the
Ollivier Cabinet had accordingly authorized the playing and singing of the
long-forbidden "Marseillaise," which, although it was well-remembered by
the survivors of '48, and was hummed even by the young Republicans of
Belleville and the Quartier Latin, proved quite a novelty to half the
population, who were destined to hear it again and again and again from
that period until the present time.
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