MY NEW PARISIAN FRIENDS.
The carpenter, Duplay, in contact with whom fortune had brought me,
had, at that period—that is to say, on the 12th of July, 1790,—the
celebrity of having given shelter to a notorious revolutionist,
which celebrity afterwards was attached to his name, his family, and
his house.
He was a good patriot, and attended constantly at the Jacobin Club
which was held in the neighborhood, and where almost all his evenings
were passed, applauding the speeches of a little advocate of Arras,
who, though ridiculed in the National Assembly, was appreciated in
the Rue St. Honoré. The name of this little advocate was Robespierre.
When we arrived, we found the table laid for supper, through the
forethought of his two daughters, Estelle and Cornelie. Their old
grandmother was seated in an arm-chair, and Madame Duplay was in the
kitchen, devoting all her attention to the forthcoming meal.
I was introduced to the two young ladies, both very charming girls.
Estelle was a blonde, with beautiful blue eyes, and a figure
wonderfully symmetrical, and flexible as a reed.
Cornelie was a brunette, with eyes black as sloes, and a stately and
majestic contour.
Estelle dropped her eyes, as she curtseyed.
Cornelie smiled, and looked me full in the face.
Neither, however, paid much attention to me after the first
salutation. I was younger than the youngest of them—that is to say,
in their eyes, almost a child.
As to the apprentices, one appeared to be about eighteen, and the
other a month or two older than I.
The elder was called Jacques Dinant. I don’t know what has since
become of him. The other was Félicién Herda, afterwards a celebrity
in the Revolution.
This latter was a young man—fair, of a light complexion—a regular
child of Paris—irritable, and as nervous as a woman. The nickname
which his comrades gave him, as his irritability was always dragging
him into controversy, and as he used always to say “No” to every
theory, was “Citizen Veto.”
Need I say that the veto was the prerogative of the King, and that it
was through his wrong use of this privilege on two occasions that he
alienated his people.
Madame Duplay appeared from the kitchen, with the first course. I was
presented to her; but she paid even less attention to me than her two
daughters had done.
She was about thirty-eight or forty years of age, and must, at one
time, have been beautiful, but with those coarse and too matured
charms common to the lower orders of the people.
She shared all the patriotic opinions of her husband, and was, like
him, an ardent admirer of Robespierre.
There was a discussion during supper concerning the relative merits
of the Jacobin leaders, in which the apprentices took part as equals
of their master.
I fancied, somehow, that Félicién Herda regarded me with an evil
eye. As the stranger, I had the seat of honor next to Mademoiselle
Cornelie; and I think he must have looked upon it as an encroachment
on his privileges.
Although well read in antiquity, I was profoundly ignorant of modern
politics, and this gained me the pity of M. Duplay.
I knew the name of the famous Club of Jacobins, where Monsieur passed
his patriotic evenings, but of all else I was ignorant.
From that bed of aristocratic Jacobins of ’89, one could not foretell
the springing up of the terrible and popular Jacobins of ’93.
Robespierre alone appeared, but he began to assume that pale and
impassible visage which was never forgotten, if once seen.
Duplay promised to take me to the Jacobins, and to show me him who
was known among them by the title of an “honest man.”
Robespierre had, as yet, but on two occasions spoken; and he had
obtained the name of the “Timon of public affairs.”
I know not if it was the view of Robespierre, whom I saw that night
for the first time, that engraved the words on my mind, but I know
this—that, in sixty years, I have not forgotten one word of his
biography, or one lineament of his face.
I feel that I could draw his portrait now, as life-like as when he
appeared first to me, on the platform, preparing to address us; and,
from that time to the end, I was his most devoted admirer.
Robespierre was born in 1758, in that old, sombre, ecclesiastical and
judicial town of Arras, capital of Artois, a province of France only
150 years, and where may yet be seen the ruins of the immense palace
of its King-Bishop.
His father, an advocate of the council of the province, lived in Rue
de Rapporteur. The young Maximilian was born there, that name being
given him in honor of the last conqueror of the city.
Notwithstanding his hard work, the advocate was poor; but a wife,
older than himself, helped to alleviate their poverty. She died.
He thought the burden too heavy to bear alone, so, one morning, he
decamped, and was no more seen in Arras.
They spoke of suicide, but nothing was proved.
The house was shut up, the four children abandoned. The eldest,
Maximilian, was eleven; after him, came his brother, whom they called
“young Robespierre;” after him, two sisters, one of whom, called
Charlotte de Robespierre, has left some rare and curious memoirs. The
other sister died three or four years after the disappearance of her
father.
What with the death of his mother, and the absence of his father,
there was enough to render the boy serious and unhappy. The friends
who assisted the family asked the powerful Abbé of St. Vaast, who
possessed a third of the town, and who had the disposal of many
bursarships at the college of Louis-le-Grand, to give one to young
Maximilian. The charitable Abbé complied with their desire.
He started alone for Paris, with a letter of recommendation to a
prebendary, who died almost at the same time as the young bursar
entered the college.
It was in that ancient building that the young pupil grew pale,
sickly, and envenomed, like a flower deprived of the sun; away from
home, away from his friends, separated from all who loved him, and
from all who could have brought a glow to his cheeks, or imparted
happiness to his withered soul.
It was there that he met Camille Desmoulins, an ecclesiastical bursar
like himself, and Danton, a paying pupil.
The sole friendship of his boyhood was formed with these two. How
lightly that friendship weighed in the balance we know, when he
believed that the moment had come to sacrifice it on the shrine of
his country.
Two things militated against the firm continuance of this friendship;
the one, the gaiety of Camille Desmoulins; and the other, the
immorality of Danton, who paid no attention to the reproaches of his
fellow-student.
Robespierre paid for his bursarship with laurel crowns. He left with
the reputation of being a sound scholar—a reputation which gained him
few friends and little honor. He afterwards studied with a procureur,
entitled himself to practise, and returned to Arras a middling
lawyer, but a stern politician, and having learnt to smile with the
lips while the heart was filled with gall.
His younger brother took his place at college, while Maximilian,
through the kindness of the Abbé de St. Vaast, was nominated a member
of the criminal tribunal.
One of the first cases that he had to judge was that of an assassin.
The crime was not only patent, but avowed. It fell to Robespierre to
pronounce sentence of death.
The next day he sent in his resignation, not wishing to be put to a
like test again.
That is how it was that he became an advocate. His philanthropy made
him the defender, in place of the condemner of men. Duplay pretended
to know, from certain sources, that Robespierre had never undertaken
to defend a cause that was not just; but even were it just, he had
to uphold it against all. He examined the cause of the peasants who
brought a complaint against the Bishop of Arras, found it just,
pleaded against his benefactor, and gained the day.
This rectitude, although it had no material influence on his
fortunes, increased greatly his reputation. The province sent him to
the Etats Généraux, where he had for his adversaries all the nobility
and clergy of his native State.
For adversaries—we say too much. The priest and nobles thought too
little of him to regard him in such a light.
This contempt, which had followed Maximilian to college, pursued him
with greater violence now that he had attained a seat in the National
Assembly.
He was poor and they knew it. They ridiculed his poverty; he thought
it an honor. Having nothing, receiving nothing, but his salary as a
member of the Assembly, a third of which went to his sister, he still
lived. When the Assembly put on mourning for the death of Franklin,
Robespierre, too poor to purchase a suit of black, borrowed a coat
for four francs, which, being too long for him, excited, throughout
the time of mourning, the irrepressible mirth of the Assembly. The
only consolation left him among all this ridicule was, that no one
doubted his honesty.
“Had I not confidence,” said he, in one of his speeches, “I should be
one of the most wretched men in the world.”
Yet, notwithstanding this, the man was not popular. Some few, indeed,
through a species of instinct, saw that he was capable of great
things, and among these were Duplay, his wife, and his two daughters.
All these details were given me during supper with the persistence of
conviction. It was, therefore, with the liveliest satisfaction that I
hailed M. Duplay’s offer to take me to the Jacobins’ Club, and looked
forward with curiosity to see him whom they called _honest_, and
afterwards stamped _incorruptible_.