“The Muse is the plebeian virgin, the virtuous young working-girl, the daughter of the people, administering a formidable slap in the face to the _pères la pudeur_,[85] showing these drivellers of another epoch, these dotards whose sentiments are false, unnatural, and bourgeois, that it is possible to achieve the beautiful in taking for a queen an _ouvrière_, a _rosière_ even, of Montmartre, region of ideals too young for their too old ideas.”
This Montmartre fête of the _Vache Enragée_ is unique among the fêtes of the whole world, I fancy, in that it is at once a bold apotheosis of the racking poverty of the artistic career and a defiant, masterful sneer at the smugness of commercial Philistinism.[86] “It is a defence of _la misère_ you are making,” said Zola in a communication to its organisers,—“a defence of _la misère_; and, to my thinking, you are right in making this defence.” Cyrano, a knight of the _vache enragée_, who would have found himself delightfully at home in the Montmartre cavalcade, made a similar defence, according to Rostand, some centuries ago:—
“_Moi, c’est moralement que j’ai mes élégances. Je ne m’attife pas ainsi qu’un freluquet, Mais je suis plus soigné si je suis moins coquet. Je ne sortirais pas avec, par négligence, Un affront pas très-bien lavé, la conscience Jaune encore de sommeil dans le coin de son œil, Un honneur chiffoné, des scrupules en deuil. Mais je marche sans rien sur moi qui ne reluise, Empanaché d’indépendance et de franchise; Ce n’est pas une taille avantageuse, c’est Mon âme que je cambre ainsi qu’en un corset, Et tout couvert d’exploits qu’en rubans je m’attache, Retroussant mon esprit ainsi qu’une moustache, Je fais en traversant les groupes et les ronds, Sonner les vérités comme des éperons._”
The device, _Vache Enragée_, cavalierly adopted as their catchword by the painters, sculptors, poets, and musicians of Montmartre, was taken directly from the title of a Montmartre romance by Emile Goudeau, who was named on that account honorary president of the festival; but the phrase had long been current in French conversation and literature to designate the poverty of the _prolétariat artistique et littéraire_. Thus, the great Daudet wrote regarding one of the characters of _Jack_:—