THE VOICE OF THE PAST
Under what irresistible spell had she fallen? Through what intricate
windings had the subtle poison entered the young girl's pure and
innocent soul, then steeped in the fresh dew of life's dawning hopes?
What sweet vision had the young man held out to her, to which she had
yielded in all innocence, her eyes dreamily fixed on the vague
unknown, and from which she had awaked, all pale and trembling, her
heart smitten with unspeakable dismay?
Or had they both been the puppets of Destiny, of blind Chance which
at so tender an age had brought them together under the same roof, in
an intimacy of daily intercourse, increased by the sadness of their
cloistered existence, so that they had been the victims of their
extreme youth, of the attraction they unconsciously exercised over
each other, both carried away by the strong currents of life.
She, influenced by a train of incidents insignificant in themselves,
rendered dangerous by repetition, details of every-day life which had
gradually drawn her towards the young man, whose presence at last
became a sweet necessity to her lonely existence.
He, suddenly stirred during the first few days of his residence in
the Hôtel Rue des Lions; never for a moment thinking of the distance
which separated him from the daughter of Monsieur de Pontivy. Think?
How could he think, thrilling under the first revelation of love
disclosed to him with the eloquence of Rousseau in _la Nouvelle
Héloïse_, that romance of burning passion then in vogue? He had
commenced to read the novel, by stealth, at Louis-le-Grand, and
finished it in three nights of mad insomnia, in his little room on
the third floor at the Hôtel de Pontivy. All the sap of his youth
beat at his temples and throbbed in his veins at that flaming
rhetoric; every phrase burned like kisses on his lips.
He recited portions aloud, learned them by heart, found them sublime
in utterance. He yearned to repeat them to others, as one does
music. And to whom could he repeat them but to Clarisse, placed
there as if expressly to hear them? So he did repeat them to her.
At all times and everywhere when alone with her. At the harpsichord,
on long winter evenings, when the guests gravely and silently played
at cards, and he turned the pages of her music. Out walking, when he
met her, as if by chance, and spoke to her--while the eyes of
Mademoiselle Jusseaume wandered absently from them--of Paris which
she knew so little, the gay _fêtes_ and gossip of the town, thus
opening out to her endless vistas of happiness until then unknown,
which involved promises of future joy.
He recited verses to her, pastorals, such as were then upon men's
lips, mythologic madrigals made for rolling round a bonbon. She
found them charming, and sought to learn them by heart. He copied
them and gave them to her. This was a dangerous game. He became
bolder, copied love-letters, then wrote them himself and compared
them with Rousseau's. She read them, delighted at first, then
trembling, and when she trembled it was too late.
She was unconsciously dragged into a world of fancy and illusion by
the very strength of his youth and enthusiasm. His presence in that
dull dwelling had seemed a ray of sunlight under which the bud of her
young life had opened into flower. Thus, all unconscious of the
poisonous mist that was more closely enveloping her from day to day,
she found herself gliding insensibly down a steep declivity which
gave way under her feet as she advanced, and before she could recover
possession of her senses, or stay her quick descent to question
whereto it led, she was undone!
"Every girl who reads this book is lost," Rousseau had written at the
beginning of la Nouvelle Héloïse. And she had done far worse.
Alone, given up to her own devices, just awakening to the mystery of
existence, pure, innocent, and guileless, she had imbibed its
insidious poison from the lips of one she had learned to love. And
now she had fallen from these dizzy heights, dazed and crushed,
lonelier than ever, for Monsieur de Pontivy had turned Robespierre
out of the house soon after the fatal discovery.
The decision had been brief, in the character of a command:
"Of course, it is understood that what passed between us last night
shall go no further," Monsieur de Pontivy had said to the young
secretary, called to the Councillor's study at breakfast-time. "You
can seek some pretext to treat me disrespectfully at table before the
servants, and I shall beg you to leave my house."
The young man listened respectfully.
"But I am willing to make reparation," he said.
The Councillor drew back under this new affront.
"You marry my daughter! You forget who you are, Monsieur de
Robespierre! You, the husband of Mademoiselle de Pontivy! Enough,
sir, and do as I have said!"
The departure of young Robespierre took place as the Councillor
desired. No one had the slightest suspicion of the real reason, and
Clarisse, who was suffering from a severe attack of brain fever, kept
her bed.
In refusing to give the hand of his daughter, even dishonoured, to
any one who was not of her rank, Monsieur de Pontivy was but true to
his principles, to his own code of morals, based upon caste prejudice
and foolish pride.
Could he have read the future of the young man he would not have
acted otherwise, and yet that young man was destined to become one of
the masters of France--but at what a price and under what conditions!
Nineteen years had passed since then, nineteen years in which events
succeeded each other with a rapidity and violence unparalleled in the
previous history of Europe. The excesses of an arbitrary government,
added to universal discontent, had led to the Revolution. But this
act of deliverance and social regeneration was unhappily to develop
even worse excesses. The Reign of Terror was now raging. Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette had perished on the scaffold, followed by a
large number of nobles and priests, victims of the tempest now at
flood, and drowning in its crimson tide numberless victims with no
respect of persons. The whole nation, in the country and in Paris,
was perishing in the iron grasp of a new and more despotic
government. Terror, monstrous parody of liberty, ruled the State,
which was adrift without rudder on the storm, while all its people
were driven to distraction by wild advocates of the guillotine.
Prominent among these fanatics, raised to power by the very
suddenness of events, was Maximilien de Robespierre, once the young
secretary of Monsieur de Pontivy, now styled simply Robespierre,
President of the National Assembly, or Convention, the most powerful
and most dreaded of the twelve conventionnels who, under the name of
members of the Committee of Public Safety, ruled the destinies of
France.
History is the romance of nations, more abundant in wild
improbabilities than the most extravagant fairy tale; and the French
Revolution stands out from the events which have perplexed the mind
of man since the world began, a still unsolved enigma. The actors in
this fearful drama move like beings of some other sphere, the produce
of a wild imagination, the offspring of delirium, created to astound
and stupefy. And it was the destiny of the secretary of Monsieur de
Pontivy to become one of these. Still in the prime of his life,
scarcely thirty-six, he was one of the principal if not the chief
personage of the Revolution.
However signal his success, the course of events left him unchanged.
During the slow accession of a man to the summit of human aspiration,
his deficiences are sometimes dwarfed and his powers developed and
strengthened; but the foundation remains the same--just as trees
which ever renew their leaves, and absorb from the same soil a
perennial flow of life.
After nineteen years, marked by a succession of events so rapid, so
tumultuous, and of such moment that they would have sufficed to fill
a century of history, the secretary of Monsieur de Pontivy, whom we
last saw awake to love under the influence of Rousseau, found
himself, on a day given up to retirement and study, at _l'Ermitage_
of Montmorency, in the very room where the great philosopher wrote
_la Nouvelle Héloïse_, whose burning pages had been a revelation to
his youth.
He had come there to seek inspiration for the speech he was to
deliver on the Place de la Révolution at the approaching festival in
honour of the Supreme Being, a ceremony instituted and organised
under his direction, and which had been suggested to him by the
spiritualistic theories of Rousseau.
It was Friday, the 6th of June, 1794, or, to use the language of the
time, the 20th _prairial_ of the second year of the Republic.
Robespierre, having left Paris the evening before, had come down to
sleep in that quiet and flowery retreat, built at the entrance of the
forest of Montmorency, like a nest hidden in the under branches of a
tree. Rousseau's _Ermitage_, which became State property after the
Revolution, had been secretly sublet to him by a friend and given
over to the care of a gardener, who also acted as sole domestic
during his visits, which were very frequent. For he often fled from
Paris secretly, seeking solitude and calm, and a little of that
poetry of nature in which the fiercest Revolutionists, his peers in
crime, loved sometimes to refresh themselves in the short pauses of
their fratricidal and sanguinary struggles.
Robespierre descended to the garden soon after daybreak, inhaling the
fresh morning air, wandering under the shade of those great trees
where Rousseau used to walk, or sitting in his favourite nooks;
dreaming the while, his soul drinking to the full the infinite
sweetness of Nature's magic charms, quickened into life at the rosy
touch of morn. He would busy himself in rustic pursuits, botanising,
or gathering periwinkles, the master's favourite flowers; thus
occupied he used to prolong his walk into the forest of Montmorency,
which seemed but a continuation of the garden. Here, he would
sometimes find friends awaiting him, an intimate circle which he was
wont to gather round him to share a rustic meal upon the grass.
That morning he had awakened earlier than usual, beset with ideas for
his forthcoming speech, the first that he was to deliver at a public
ceremony, whose anticipated success would, like an apotheosis, deify
him in the eyes of the people, and set a decisive and brilliant seal
to that supremacy of power which was the goal of his boundless
ambition. It was important that he should finish before noon, when
he had arranged an interview in the forest, a political interview of
the highest importance, which would perhaps effect a change in the
foreign policy of France.
Robespierre had slept in the very room which Rousseau had occupied on
the first floor, and in which were gathered all the furniture and
possessions of the great man, left behind in the haste of removal,
after his famous quarrel with the fair owner of _l'Ermitage_. The
bed was Rousseau's, as were two walnut cabinets and a table of the
same rich wood, the very table on which the philosopher wrote the
first part of _la Nouvelle Hèloïse_; then a small library, a
barometer, and two pictures, one of which, by an English painter,
represented "The Soldier's Fortune," and the other "The Wise and
Foolish Virgins." In these surroundings Robespierre seemed to
breathe more intimately the spirit of the master for whom he had such
an ardent admiration.
Robespierre had passed a sleepless night, judging from his pale,
feverish face and swollen eyelids. Outwardly he was little changed.
Monsieur de Pontivy would have recognised his former secretary in
this man before whom all France trembled. It was the same dapper
figure, spruce and neat as ever, with that nervous, restless manner
which time had but accentuated. This nervousness, apparent in his
whole person, was visible even in his face, which, now deeply marked
with small-pox, twitched and contracted convulsively. The high
cheek-bones and the green, cat-like eyes, shifting about in an uneasy
fashion, added to the unpleasant expression of the whole countenance.
He threw open the three windows of his room, which looked out on the
garden. A whiff of fresh air fanned his face, charged with all the
sweet perfumes of the country. Day had scarcely dawned, and the
whole valley of Montmorency was bathed in pale, uncertain light, like
floating mist. He remained at one of the windows, gazing long and
earnestly out on awakening nature, watching the dawn as it slowly
lifted the veil at the first smiles of morning. Then he seated
himself at the little table prepared for work, with sheets of paper
spread about, as if awaiting the thoughts of which they were to be
the messengers. He slipped his pen in an inkstand ornamented with a
small bust of Rousseau, and commenced.
Jotting down some rough notes and sentences, he stopped to look out
of the window in a dreamy, absent manner, apparently without thought.
Thirty-five years ago, amid the same surroundings, in that same room,
on that very table, Rousseau had written those burning pages of
romance under whose influence Robespierre had stammered forth his
first love tale on the shoulder of Clarisse. Did he ever think of
that drama of his youth, of that living relic of his sin wandering
about the world perhaps, his child, the fruit of his first love,
whose advent into life Clarisse had announced to him some months
after the terrible scene at the Rue des Lions-Saint-Paul? Think? He
had more important things to trouble him! Think indeed! The idea
had never entered his head. For many years the intellectual appetite
had alone prevailed in him;--egoism, and that masterful ambition
which asks no other intoxicant than the delirium of success, and the
thought of realising one day, by terrorism even if necessary, Utopian
theories of universal equality. And yet the letter in which Clarisse
had apprised him of her approaching motherhood would have moved a
stone:--
"DEAR MAXIMILIEN,--I never thought to write to you after the solemn
promise torn from me by my father, the day he declared I should never
be your wife. An unexpected event releases me from my oath, and
brings me nearer to you.
"I am about to become a mother.
"My father knows this. I thought that the announcement would conquer
his resistance, but I was mistaken. My supplications were vain.
"He persists unshaken in his refusal, exasperated at my entreaties,
and is resolved to send me to a convent, where the innocent being
whose life is already considered a crime will first see the light.
My heart bleeds at the thought of the wide gulf that must separate
you from your child, orphaned before its birth. And what pain for
you to have a child that you must never know! But I will spare you
this. You are the disposer of our destiny, Maximilien. We are yours.
"I have some money saved, which, in addition to the kind help of
Mademoiselle Jusseaume, would enable us to cross to England, where a
priest of our faith will bless our union. We can return afterwards
to France, if you wish; that shall be as you judge best, for you will
have no wife more submissive and devoted than the mother of your
child.
"I am sending this letter to your aunt's at Arras, requesting them to
forward it to you. Write to me at the Poste Restante, Rue du Louvre,
under the name of the kind-hearted Mademoiselle Jusseaume, who is
reading over my shoulder while I write, her eyes full of tears.
Wherever I may be, your reply will always reach me.
"I kiss thee from my soul, dear companion of my heart--that heart
which through all its sufferings burns with an undying love and is
thine forever.
"CLARISSE DE PONTIVY."
This letter remained unanswered. Had it reached its destination?
Yes; young Robespierre had actually received it, eight days after, in
Paris, at the Hôtel du Coq d'Argent, on the Quai des
Grands-Augustins, where he had hired a room after leaving Monsieur de
Pontivy's house. He had read and re-read Clarisse's letter, then, on
consideration, he burnt it, so that no trace of it should be left.
Clarisse's proposal was a risky adventure. What would become of them
both in England when her meagre resources were exhausted? Return to
France? Implore Monsieur de Pontivy's pardon? A fine prospect! He
would cause the marriage to be annulled, for it was illegal both in
England and in France, as the young people were not of age. As to
him, his fate was sealed in advance. He would be sent to the
Bastille. And the child? He scarcely gave a thought to it. So much
might happen before its birth!
This, however, was made known to him, soon after, in another letter
from Clarisse. The child--a boy--was born. If he did not decide to
take them the child would be abandoned, and she sent to a convent.
Robespierre hesitated, crushing the letter between his fingers, then
resolutely burnt it, as he destroyed the first. Paugh! The
grandfather was wealthy. The child would not starve. Clarisse had
told him that she had given him Monsieur de Pontivy's Christian
name--Olivier. The Councillor would eventually relent. And was it
not, after all, one of those adventures of common occurrence in the
life of young men? He, at least, had done his duty by offering to
make reparation by marriage. Monsieur de Pontivy would not hear of
it. So much the worse!
Ah! he was of mean birth, was he!--without ancestry, without
connections, without a future.... Without a future? Was that
certain, though?
Monsieur de Pontivy's refusal, far from humiliating him, gave a spur
to his ambition. All his latent self-esteem and pride rose suddenly
in one violent outburst. Full of bitterness and wounded vanity he
finished his law studies in a sort of rage, and set out for Arras,
his native place, which he had left as a child, returning to it a
full-fledged lawyer. No sooner was he called to the Bar than he came
into public notice, choosing the cases most likely to bring him
renown.
But these local triumphs, however flattering, only half-satisfied his
ambition. He cared little or nothing for provincial fame. He would
be also foremost in the ranks of those who followed with anxious
interest the great Revolutionary movement now astir everywhere, in
the highways and byways of France, with its train of new ideas and
aspirations. Robespierre took part in this cautiously and adroitly,
reserving ample margin for retreat in case of future surprises, but
already foreseeing the brilliant career that politics would
thenceforth offer to ambition.
At the Convocation of the States-General, the young lawyer was sent
to Versailles to represent his native town. Success was, at length,
within his grasp. He was nearing the Court, and about to plunge into
the whirl of public affairs, in which he thought to find an avenue to
his ambition.
And yet he did not succeed all at once. Disconcerted, he lost
command of himself, became impatient and excited by extreme
nervousness. He had developed such tendencies even at Arras, and
time seemed only to increase them. In the chamber of the
States-General, still ringing with the thunderous eloquence of
Mirabeau, the scene of giant contests of men of towering mental
stature, Robespierre vainly essayed to speak. He was received with
mockery and smiles of ridicule. He appeared puny and grotesque to
these colossal champions of Liberty, with his falsetto voice, his
petty gestures, his nervous twitches and grimaces, more like a monkey
who had lost a nut than a man.
But Robespierre's colleagues would have ceased their raillery perhaps
had they gone deeper into the motives and character of the man, and
sounded the subtle intricacies of his soul. They would have found in
those depths a resolute desire to accomplish his aim, an insatiable
pride joined to the confidence of an apostle determined to uphold his
own doctrines, and to promote theories of absolute equality, and of a
return to the ideal state of nature. They would have perhaps
discovered that this ambitious fanatic was capable of anything, even
of atrocious crime, to realise his dreams.
The impetuous tribune Mirabeau had said at Versailles: "That man will
go far, for he believes in what he says." Mirabeau ought to have
said, "He believes in himself, and, as the effect of his mad vanity,
he looks upon everything he says as gospel truth." And in this lay
his very strength. This was the source of his success, founded on
that cult of self, and a confidence in his own powers carried to the
point of believing himself infallible. Through all the jolts and
jars of party strife, the thunder and lightning contests, the eager
enthusiasm or gloomy despondency, the grand and tumultuous
outpourings of the revolutionary volcano through all this hideous but
sublime conflict, and amid dissensions of parties swarming from the
four corners of France, tearing each other to pieces like wild
beasts, Robespierre cunningly pursued a stealthy course, sinuously
ingratiating himself now with the more advanced, now with the more
moderate, always faithful to his original plan and policy.
Words! Rhetoric! these were his arms. Speech was not incriminating,
but actions were. Words were forgotten, actions lived as facts, and
Robespierre kept as clear of these as possible. During the most
startling manifestations of that horrible revolutionary struggle, he
was never seen, though the work of his hand could be traced
everywhere, for far from retiring he carried fuel to the flames,
knowing well that every one would be swallowed up in the fratricidal
strife. When the danger was over and victory assured, he would
re-appear fierce and agitated, thus creating the illusion that he had
taken part in the last battle, and suffered personally in the contest.
Where was he at the insurrection of Paris, the 10th of August, 1792,
when the populace invaded the Tuileries, and hastened the fall and
imprisonment of the King, whom they sent to the scaffold some months
later? Where was he a few days later, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th of
September, when armed bands wandered through Paris, forcing the
prison doors, and butchering the hostages? Where was he during the
riots of February, 1793, when the famished populace prowled about
Paris asking for bread? Where was he the evening of the 1st of May,
when eighteen thousand Parisians assailed the National Convention to
turn out the traitor deputies? Where was he two days after, on the
2nd of June, when the insurrection recommenced?
Hidden, immured, barricaded, walking to and fro like an encaged
tiger-cat, excited and agitated, shaken with doubts, cold beads of
perspiration standing on his forehead, breathless to hear any news
which his agents and detectives might bring him, and only breathing
freely again when the result was known.
For this man was a coward. And was this known? No! Not then! All
that was known was what he wished to make public; that he was poor,
that he was worthy in every respect of the title of "Incorruptible"
given to him by a revolutionist in a moment of enthusiasm. And, in
truth, he was free from any venal stain, and knew that in this lay
the greater part of his strength.
What was also known was that he was temperate and chaste. His
private life, from the time he left Versailles with the
States-General to come to Paris and install himself in a humble
lodging in the Rue de Saintonge, would bear the closest scrutiny. He
lived there frugally and modestly, his only resource being the
deputy's fees of eighteen francs a day, part of which he
ostentatiously sent to his sister at Arras. Then suddenly he
established himself in the house of Duplay the carpenter, in the Rue
Saint-Honoré, a few steps from his club, the Jacobin Club; or, more
properly speaking, he was established there by force, by the
carpenter himself, an ardent admirer of his, who took advantage of a
chance hospitality during the riots to press him to remain
indefinitely. He occupied a room under their roof where he had now
lived a year, surrounded by the jealous care of the whole family, in
republican simplicity, after the true patriarchal manner.
All this was well known, or if it had not been Robespierre would have
proclaimed it, for from this Spartan setting an atmosphere of
democratic virtue enveloped him, and raised him in solitary state
above his fellows.
Yes, he was above them! Others gave themselves away, but he never!
Others had revealed their characters in unguarded moments, and laid
bare to the world their frailties and their virtues. He had never
betrayed himself, for he never acted on impulse. The others were
well known to be made of flesh and blood, of idealism, and dust, but
who knew the real Robespierre? The very mystery and doubt in which
his true character was wrapped had lent credence to the common rumour
which attributed to him supernatural qualities. He was compared to
the pure source, high among virgin snows, from which the Revolution
sprung.
He stood alone on his pedestal, inaccessible, unassailable. All the
great leaders of the Revolution, his predecessors or his rivals, had
disappeared, carried off in the whirlwind, victims of their
exaggerated enthusiasm, as Mirabeau and Marat, or of Robespierre's
treachery, as Danton and Camille Desmoulins, ground in the sanguinary
mill of the Revolutionary Tribunal, on his sole accusation.
Thus when his path was cleared of those who stood most in his way, he
anticipated the time when he should hold the destiny of France in his
hand, aided by the Convention now subdued to his will, and the whole
armed force grovelling at his feet.
Yet one obstacle remained to be surmounted: the Committee of Public
Safety to whom the Convention had transferred its authority, and of
which he was a member, but where he felt a terrible undercurrent of
animosity directed against him.
At this point Robespierre realised that he must either cajole or
conquer them. For if they were curbed and reduced to silence, he
would have all power absolutely in his own hands. The hour was
approaching. It was necessary to strike a decisive blow, and he
thought to have found the means to do so, and to overawe the
Committee, at his Festival of the Supreme Being, which would take
place in a couple of days, when he would speak to the assembled
multitude, and dominate his colleagues in his quality of President of
the Convention, a post he had sought in order to have an opportunity
to assert himself at this lay ceremony, this parody of the religious
celebrations of the old regime.
His intention was to confirm in public, amid the acclamations of the
populace, the religion of a new God, whose existence he had just
proclaimed--the God of Nature, a stranger to Christianity, borrowed
entire from Rousseau's famous pages in _le Vicaire Savoyard_.
Robespierre's sectarian temperament experienced a deeper satisfaction
than he had perhaps ever felt, at the thought that he was to declaim,
among flowers and incense, those empty, sonorous phrases which he was
writing on the little walnut table where his master had found some of
his most burning inspirations. He became in his own eyes the high
priest of the Republic, offering incense on the altar of his own
superhuman sovereignty. Yes, Robespierre could already hear the
enthusiastic applause of the multitude! Who would dare to stand in
his way after such public consecration in the immense Place de la
Révolution, where for a week past the platform was being prepared.
Such was the man shadowed by Destiny, the further course of whose
chequered career, with its startling incidents, we are now to follow.
Robespierre had just finished his first discourse, for he was to
deliver two. He closed it with a menace. "People," it ran, "let us
under the auspices of the Supreme Being give ourselves up to a pure
joy. To-morrow we shall again take arms against vice and tyrants!"
This was his note of warning to those who, he felt, ranged themselves
against him. Completely satisfied with himself, he read and re-read
his sentences, stopping to polish periods and phrases, or seeking
graceful and sonorous epithets. One passage especially pleased him,
for a breath of _le Vicaire Savoyard_ seemed to pervade it. He spoke
of the presence of the Supreme Being, in all the joys of life. "It
is He," he said, "who adds a charm to the brow of beauty by adorning
it with modesty; it is He who fills the maternal heart with
tenderness and joy; it is He who floods with happy tears the eyes of
a son clasped in his mother's arms." Robespierre smiled at the music
of the phrasing which in his pedantry he thought his master would not
have disowned.
But he stopped. After all, was it not a reminiscence of _le Vicaire
Savoyard_? Perhaps he had made use of the same metaphor as Rousseau?
He would be accused of feeble imitation! This could be easily
ascertained, as the book was near at hand, in the little bookcase
that once belonged to the master. He had but to take it from the
case. The key was in the lock, but it resisted, though he used all
his strength. Growing impatient, he was about to break open the
door, but paused as though this would be sacrilege, and at last sent
for the gardener.
"This lock does not act, does it?" he said.
The gardener tried it in his turn, but with no better success.
"It is of the utmost importance for me to have a book which is in
there," said Robespierre, visibly annoyed.
"That can be easily managed, citizen; there is a locksmith a few
steps from here, on the road to the forest. I will go and fetch his
apprentice."
The gardener ran downstairs, and Robespierre returned to his work.
He was soon aware of footsteps advancing. It was the gardener
returning with the apprentice.
"This way, citizen," said the gardener.
The two men entered. Robespierre had his back to them, and continued
to write, a happy inspiration having occurred to him, which he was
shaping into a sentence. After they had tried several keys the door
yielded at last.
"Now it's right, citizen!" said the gardener.
"Thanks!" said Robespierre, still bending over his work, and absorbed
in his sentence.
Suddenly the sound of a voice floated up through the casement:--
"Petits oiseaux de ce viant bocage...."
It was the young apprentice returning home across the garden,
singing. Robespierre stopped in his writing, vaguely surprised. He
had heard that air before! But where? When? This he could not
tell. It was the echo of a distant memory. He turned his head
slowly in the direction of the cadence, but the song had ceased.
The fleeting impression was soon effaced, and Robespierre, having
already forgotten the coincidence, rose and went towards the now open
bookcase. Taking Rousseau's volume, he opened it at these words: "Is
there in the world a more feeble and miserable being, a creature more
at the mercy of all around it, and in such need of pity, care, and
protection, as a child?" He passed over two chapters, turning the
pages hastily. The phrase he wanted was undoubtedly more towards the
end. As one of the leaves resisted the quick action of his hand, he
stopped a moment to glance at the text: "From my youth upwards, I
have respected marriage as the first and holiest institution of
nature..." Now he would find it. The phrase he wanted could not be
much further! It soon cheered his sight: "I see God in all His
works, I feel His presence in me, I see Him in all my surroundings."
Robespierre breathed freely again. Here was only an analogy of
thought, suggested, hinted at by Rousseau, and which he, Robespierre,
had more fully developed. Smiling and reassured he returned to his
place.