LOUVRE

LOUVER  or LUFFER, in architecture, the lantern built upon the roof of the hall in ancient times to allow the smoke to escape when the fire was made on the pavement in the middle of the hall . The term is also applied to the flat overlapping slips of wood, glass, &c., with which such openings are closed, arranged to give ventilation without the admission of rain . Openings fitted with louvers are now utilized for the purposes of ventilation in schools and manufactories . The word has been derived from the French l'ouvert, the " open" I succeeded in bringing to justice in September but for the poor support he received from the Girondist leaders . It is more probable, however, that his ill-balanced invective contributed to their ruin and his own; for him Robespierre was a " royalist," Marat " the principal agent of England," the Montagnards Orleanists in masquerade . His courageous attitude at the trial of Louis XVI., when he supported the " appeal to the people," only served still further to discredit the Girondists . He defended them, however, to the last with great courage, if with little discretion; and after the crisis of the 31st of May 1793 he shared the perils of the party who fled from Paris (see GIRONDISTS) . His wife, " Lodoiska," who had actively co-operated in his propaganda, was also in danger . After the fall of Robespierre, he was recalled to the Convention, when he was instrumental in bringing Carrier and the others responsible for the Noyades of Nantes to justice . His influence was now considerable; he was elected a member of the Committee of the Constitution, president of the Assembly, and member of the Committee of Public Safety, against the overgrown power of which he had in earlier days protested . His hatred of the Mountain had not made him reactionary; he was soon regarded as one of the mainstays of the " Jacobins," and La Sentinelle reappeared, under his auspices, preaching union among re-publicans . Under the Directory (1795) he was elected a member of the Council of Five Hundred, of which he was secretary, and also a member of the Institute .

Meanwhile he had returned to his old

trade and set up a bookseller's shop in the Palais Royal . But, in spite of the fact that he had once more denounced the Jacobins in La Sentinelle, his name had become identified with all that the combative spirits of the jeunesse doree most disliked; his shop was attacked by the " young men" with cries of " A bas la Loupe, a bas la belle Ledoiska, a bas les gardes du corps de Louvet!" he and his wife were insulted in the streets and the theatres: " A has les Louvets et les Louvetants!" and he was compelled to leave Paris . The Directory appointed him to the consulship at Palermo, but he died on the'25th of August 1797 before taking up his post . In 1795 Louvet published a portion of his Memoirs under the title of Quelques notices pour l'histoire et le recit de Ines perils depuis le 31 mai 1793 . They were mainly written in the various hiding-places in which Louvet rook refuge, and they give a vivid picture of the sufferings of the proscribed Girondists . They form an invaluable document for the study of the psychology of the Revolution; for in spite of their considerable literary art, they are artless in their revelation of the mental and moral state of their author, a characteristic type of the honest, sentimental, somewhat hysterical and wholly unbalanced minds nurtured on the abstractions of the philosophes . The first complete edition of the Memoires de Louvet de Couvrai, edited, with preface, notes and tables, by F . A . Aulard, was published at Paris in 1889 .