EVEN FRENCH "COMEDY" IS CONSERVATIVE:

[The Bal des Victimes] was an orgiastic evening of aristocratic irreverence. Attendees wore bizarre black costumes, intentionally gauzy and threadbare to mock the severity of the French Revolution. Men sheared the backs of their heads, and women tied their hair up, baring their necks in the way that executioners prepared the condemned for the guillotine. Most ballgoers tied red ribbons or shawls around their necks, cheekily signifying the spout of blood produced by the guillotine's slicing blade. These young aristocrats were rowdy and outlandish, a gang of pro-establishment punks -- they were les Incroyables et Merveilleuses.

Also known as les Muscadins for the expensive, musky perfume they wore in rebellion against the revolutionary rebuke of decadence, the "incredible and marvelous ones" first appeared around 1794. These aristocrats had been itching to come out of hiding and party since the beginning of the Reign of Terror in 1792, during which the First Republic government under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre lopped off the heads of 40,000 people, most of them from the highest echelons of French society.

When Robespierre himself was guillotined on July 28, 1794, thus ending the terror, surviving aristocrats wasted no time getting decadent. Ornate carriages rolled through the streets of Paris the day after the revolutionary leader's execution.

And these initial parades of wealth were only the beginning. All forms of entertainment once again thrived in the French capital, with theaters and music halls putting on performances that mocked revolutionary austerity.

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