1The 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.

2He 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.

3When 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.

4I 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.

5Cornelie was a brunette, with eyes black as sloes, and a stately and majestic contour.

6Estelle dropped her eyes, as she curtseyed.

7Cornelie smiled, and looked me full in the face.

8Neither, 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.

9As to the apprentices, one appeared to be about eighteen, and the other a month or two older than I.

10The 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.

11This 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.”

12Need 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.

13Madame 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.

14She 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.

15She shared all the patriotic opinions of her husband, and was, like him, an ardent admirer of Robespierre.

16There was a discussion during supper concerning the relative merits of the Jacobin leaders, in which the apprentices took part as equals of their master.

17I 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.

18Although well read in antiquity, I was profoundly ignorant of modern politics, and this gained me the pity of M. Duplay.

19I knew the name of the famous Club of Jacobins, where Monsieur passed his patriotic evenings, but of all else I was ignorant.

20From that bed of aristocratic Jacobins of ’89, one could not foretell the springing up of the terrible and popular Jacobins of ’93.

21Robespierre alone appeared, but he began to assume that pale and impassible visage which was never forgotten, if once seen.

22Duplay promised to take me to the Jacobins, and to show me him who was known among them by the title of an “honest man.”

23Robespierre had, as yet, but on two occasions spoken; and he had obtained the name of the “Timon of public affairs.”

24I 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.

25I 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.

26Robespierre 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.

27His 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.

28Notwithstanding 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.

29They spoke of suicide, but nothing was proved.

30The 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.

31What 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.

32He 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.

33It 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.

34It was there that he met Camille Desmoulins, an ecclesiastical bursar like himself, and Danton, a paying pupil.

35The 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.

36Two 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.

37Robespierre 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.

38His 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.

39One 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.

40The next day he sent in his resignation, not wishing to be put to a like test again.

41That 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.

42This 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.

43For adversaries—we say too much. The priest and nobles thought too little of him to regard him in such a light.

44This contempt, which had followed Maximilian to college, pursued him with greater violence now that he had attained a seat in the National Assembly.

45He 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.

46“Had I not confidence,” said he, in one of his speeches, “I should be one of the most wretched men in the world.”

47Yet, 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.

48All 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.