Editing French Directory (section)

=== Amusement – ''Bals des victimes'', pleasure gardens, new restaurants and cafés ===
Although balls were not banned during the [[Reign of Terror]],<ref>Tissier, André, ''Les spectacles à Paris pendant la Révolution... de la proclamation de la République à la fin de la Convention nationale (21 septembre 1792 – 26 octobre 1795)'', publisher: Droz, 2002, pp. 363–369 and further [https://books.google.com/books?id=saeLdu3k14AC&q=bal&pg=PA27]</ref> after the death of Robespierre and the fall of the Jacobins, the city experienced a frenzy of dancing that lasted throughout the period of the French Directory. The Goncourt brothers reported that 640 balls took place in 1797 alone. Several former monasteries were turned into ballrooms, including the [[Professed House (Paris)|Noviciate of the Jesuits]], the ''Monastère des Carmes'' (turned into a prison where 191 members of the Catholic Church — bishops, priests, monks — were [[September Massacres|massacred on 2 September 1792]]), the ''Séminaire Saint-Sulpice'', and even in the former Saint-Sulpice cemetery. Some of the former palatial townhouses of the nobility were rented and used for ballrooms; the ''Hôtel de Longueville'' near the Louvre put on enormous spectacles, with three hundred couples dancing, in thirty circles of sixteen dancers each, the women in nearly transparent dresses, styled after Roman tunics. In the public balls, everyone danced with everyone; merchants, clerks, artisans and workers danced with shop women and seamstresses. In the more popular public balls, the ''cavaliers'' were charged 80 sous for admission, while women paid 12 sous. At more exclusive balls, admission was five livres.{{sfn|de Goncourt|1864|pp=145–146}} Aristocrats who had survived or returned from exile held their own balls in their houses in the [[Faubourg Saint-Germain]], where ''[[Bals des victimes]]'' ("Balls of the victims") were attended by invitees who had lost at least one parent to the guillotine.

The formal dancing of the minuet was replaced by a much more passionate new dance, the [[waltz]], which was introduced to Paris during this time from Germany. For summer evening entertainment, Parisians began to abandon the Tuileries Gardens and the gardens of the [[Palais-Royal]] and went to the new pleasure gardens which appeared in the neighborhood between the [[Boulevards of Paris|Grands boulevards]] and the Palais-Royal. The most famous was the [[Jardin de Tivoli, Paris|''Jardin de Tivoli'']], also known as ''Folie Boutin'' or ''Grand Tivoli'', located on [[rue Saint-Lazare]]. It had belonged to an aristocrat named Boutin, who was guillotined during the Reign of Terror. It was a vast garden covering 40 [[Arpent|''arpents'']] (ca. 20 hectares), and could hold as many as ten thousand persons. It had alleys filled with promenaders, greenhouses, illuminations, an orchestra, dancing, a café, and fireworks at night. Other new gardens competed by adding spectacles and pageants. The ''[[Jardin des Champs-Élysées]]'' offered a pageant of costumed soldiers on horseback performing elaborate maneuvers and firing weapons. The ''Mousseau'' (now ''[[Parc Monceau]]'') had performers dressed as [[Native Americans in the United States|American Indians]] dancing and fighting battles. The former ''[[Palais Berlitz|Pavillon de Hanovre]]'', which had been part of the [[Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, 3rd Duke of Richelieu|Duke of Richelieu]]'s residential complex, featured a terrace for dancing and dining decorated with Turkish tents, Chinese kiosks and lanterns.{{sfn|de Goncourt|1864|pp=213–234}}

Many new restaurants and cafés, usually close to the twenty-three theaters, appeared in and around the Palais-Royal and the new boulevards. A new café, the ''Tortoni'', specializing in ice creams, opened in 1795 at the corner of the [[boulevard des Italiens]] and ''rue Taitbout''. The new restaurants in the Palais-Royal were often run by the former chefs of archbishops and aristocrats who had gone into exile. The restaurant ''Méot'' offered a menu with over one hundred dishes. Beside the ''Méot'' and ''Beauvilliers'', under the arcades of the Palais-Royal were the restaurants and cafés such as ''Naudet'', ''Robert'', ''Véry'', ''Foy'', ''Huré'' <!-- there was a Hué at the Grand Palais (=end of 19th century)  -->, ''Berceau'', ''Lyrique'', ''Liberté conquise'', ''de Chartres'' (now ''[[Le Grand Véfour]]''), and ''du Sauvage'' <!-- can't find trace of any restaurant by the name of "restaurant du Sauvage" -->(the last owned by the former coachman of Robespierre). In the cellars of the Palais-Royal were more popular cafés, usually with music, smaller menus at more reasonable prices. One of those, the ''Postal'' <!-- can't find anything by that name -->, offered a menu for just 36 sous. Many of the cafés in the cellars had orchestras; the most famous was the ''Café des Aveugles'', with an orchestra of four blind musicians.{{sfn|de Goncourt|1864|pp=73–83}}

After the Reign of Terror had ended, dining hours for upper-class Parisians returned gradually to what they had been before the Revolution, with ''déjeuner'' at midday, dinner at 6 or 7 in the evening, and supper at 2 in the morning. When the theater performances ended at 10 PM, the spectators went to the nearby cafés on the boulevards.{{sfn|de Goncourt|1864|p=74}}