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morgan-wang.livejournal.comI found this in Saint-Just Colleague of Robespierre, by Eugene Curtis. It's Gateau's eulogy of Saint-Just. Gauteau was one of Saint-Just's childhood friends. He later worked in the commisary department of the army. After 9th Thermidor, Gauteau and Thuillier, Saint-Just's secretary, were arested. Thuillier was brought before the Commitees for examination. According to Gauteau, he said "You have vainly sought to flatter of threaten me; neither fear not hope will change my heart, and I will not betray friendship or truth, but I shall live to avenge them." However, he died in prison shortly after. After waiting in prison for a long time, Gauteau wrote asking why he had been arrested. He was sent a peice of paper with, "Friend of the conspirator Saint-Just" He was outraged and decided to write his estimate of Saint-Just, "whose innocence I will defend and whom I avow for my friend, even though everyone on earth abandoned him." It was published in the intro of the first edition of Fragments sur les institutions republicanines. Its long, so here goes:
I was the friend of the conspirator Saint-Just. There then was my indictment, my death warrent and the glorious title through which I deserved a place on the scaffolds. Yes, I was the friend of Saint-Just. But Saint-Just was not a conspirator; if he had been he would sill be in power and you would exist no more. Ah! his crime, if he commmited one, was his failure to form a sacred conspiracy against those who plotted liberty's ruin.
O my friend! At the moment when misfortune has crushed you, have agreed to preserve my life only that I may one day plead the intrests of your glory and destroy the slanders which are like the wound of maddened vultures on your corpse. I rember Blossius of Cumes, who before the Roman Senate proudly confessed his friendship for Tiberius Gracchus, whom the Roman Senete had just assassinated...
Dear Saint-Just, if I escape the proscriptions which cover my country with blood, I will one day unroll your entire life before the eyes of France and of posterity, who will gaze with new emotion on the tomb of a young person, immolated by faction.
I will force even those who have misunderstood you to admiration and your slanderers and assassins to contempt.
I will recount your courage in struggling against abuses even before the time if could be thought permissible to be virtuous with impunity. I will follow you from the end of childhood, in those dep meditations which absorbed you compleatly on the science oof government and the rights of peoples, and in those sublime outbursts of horror at tyranny which devoured your soul and kindeled it with more human entusiasm. I will tell of your zeal in defending the oppressed and unfourtuneate, when in the severest seasons your made painful journeys on foot to lavish for them your efforts, your eloquence, your fourtune and your life. I will descibe you austere morality and will reveal the secrets of your private conduct, leaving it to history to make known your public conduct and your actions in government, your speeches as legislator and your immortal missions to our armies.
O day of Fleurus! You must blend your laurels, which nothing can wither, with the funeral cypress that shades my friend's tomb. And you, Pichengru, Jourdan, companions of his exploits and his glory, you will do him justice. You are warriors, you should be frank. Good faith has allways been the virture of heroes. You will tell what the fatherland owes his virtues and his courage. You will not betray the truth, you will not serve envy, for one day you would be victims of the crime whose acomplices you had become. You will tell what he did against traitors and how he exericised the national authority with needful severity; how he gave an example of frugality and courgae to the troops, of activity and prudence to the generals, of hummanity and equailty to all those who approched him.
Tyrant towards his own passions, he had subdeud them all that he might know only love of counrty. He was gentle by nature, generous, sensitive, humane and grateful. Women, children, old men, the weak, the soldiers had respect and affection; and his heart beat so strongly with such feelings that he was always made tender at the sight of these objects, so intersting in themselves.
How often have I seen him shed tears over the violence of the revolutionary government and the prolongation of a frightful regime, which he looked forward to tempering by gentle beneficent and republican institutions! But he felt that it was necessary to loosen, not to break the bowstrings. He wihsed to regenerate the public morals and to restore all hearts to virtue and nature.
He was deeply moved by the corruption of men and wished to destroy its germ by a severe education and by strong instiutions. "Today," he said to me, "one cannot propose a rigorous and salutary law, that intrigue, crime and fury do not lay hands on it and make it into an insturment of death, according to caprice and passion."
I witnessed his indignaiton at reading the law of 22 Prairial, in the headquaters garden of Marchiennes, by the bridge before Charleroy. But I must say he spoke only with enthusaim of the talents of Robespierre, for whom he cherished a sort of cult..
He sighed for the end of the Revolution, that he might give heimdelf up to his ordinaty meditaions, contemplate nature and enjoy the repose of private life in a rural home, with a person whim Heaven seemed to have destined for his companion and whose mind and heart he would have delighted to mold, far from the venomous meddling of city folk.
It is an atrocious slander to suppose him evil. Niether vengence nor hate ever entered his soul. I appeal to you, citizens of Blerancourt, under whose eyes his genius and his virtues grew. There are amoung you those whose politcal opinions have been courrupted by intriges, habits and passions, and who have outraged, slandered and persucted Saint-Just, because he walked a road contrary to that on which you entered.
Neverthless, after he became a member of the goverment, when you found yourselves led before the Revolutionary Tribunal for unpatriotic acts or words, you did not hesitated to invoke his witness and by his efforts you returned to your homes and enjoyed the embraces of your kin who never hoped to see you again. "They all have been my enemis," he said, speaking of you; "I owe them all my zeal and help, rovided public intrest of inflexible honesty do not require the sacrifce of thier liberty or lives." And he succeeded in saving you.
Pliant and socible in private matters, so he was somtimes iracible, severe, and inexorable when the courtny was involved. Then he became a lion, listening no longer, breaking down all barriers, trampling all considerations under foot and his austerity imparted fear to his friends and gave him such a somber, ferocious air with manners despotic and terrible, forcing him afterward to reflect on the immense danger involved in the exercise of absloute power, when it is entrused to man whose heads are not as well organized as thier hearts are pure.
Such was the man who, hardly twenty-seven, was cut down by a Revolution to which he had consercated his existance and who has left long regrets to his country and to his friendship.
Wow, that was long, sorry about any typos.
I was the friend of the conspirator Saint-Just. There then was my indictment, my death warrent and the glorious title through which I deserved a place on the scaffolds. Yes, I was the friend of Saint-Just. But Saint-Just was not a conspirator; if he had been he would sill be in power and you would exist no more. Ah! his crime, if he commmited one, was his failure to form a sacred conspiracy against those who plotted liberty's ruin.
O my friend! At the moment when misfortune has crushed you, have agreed to preserve my life only that I may one day plead the intrests of your glory and destroy the slanders which are like the wound of maddened vultures on your corpse. I rember Blossius of Cumes, who before the Roman Senate proudly confessed his friendship for Tiberius Gracchus, whom the Roman Senete had just assassinated...
Dear Saint-Just, if I escape the proscriptions which cover my country with blood, I will one day unroll your entire life before the eyes of France and of posterity, who will gaze with new emotion on the tomb of a young person, immolated by faction.
I will force even those who have misunderstood you to admiration and your slanderers and assassins to contempt.
I will recount your courage in struggling against abuses even before the time if could be thought permissible to be virtuous with impunity. I will follow you from the end of childhood, in those dep meditations which absorbed you compleatly on the science oof government and the rights of peoples, and in those sublime outbursts of horror at tyranny which devoured your soul and kindeled it with more human entusiasm. I will tell of your zeal in defending the oppressed and unfourtuneate, when in the severest seasons your made painful journeys on foot to lavish for them your efforts, your eloquence, your fourtune and your life. I will descibe you austere morality and will reveal the secrets of your private conduct, leaving it to history to make known your public conduct and your actions in government, your speeches as legislator and your immortal missions to our armies.
O day of Fleurus! You must blend your laurels, which nothing can wither, with the funeral cypress that shades my friend's tomb. And you, Pichengru, Jourdan, companions of his exploits and his glory, you will do him justice. You are warriors, you should be frank. Good faith has allways been the virture of heroes. You will tell what the fatherland owes his virtues and his courage. You will not betray the truth, you will not serve envy, for one day you would be victims of the crime whose acomplices you had become. You will tell what he did against traitors and how he exericised the national authority with needful severity; how he gave an example of frugality and courgae to the troops, of activity and prudence to the generals, of hummanity and equailty to all those who approched him.
Tyrant towards his own passions, he had subdeud them all that he might know only love of counrty. He was gentle by nature, generous, sensitive, humane and grateful. Women, children, old men, the weak, the soldiers had respect and affection; and his heart beat so strongly with such feelings that he was always made tender at the sight of these objects, so intersting in themselves.
How often have I seen him shed tears over the violence of the revolutionary government and the prolongation of a frightful regime, which he looked forward to tempering by gentle beneficent and republican institutions! But he felt that it was necessary to loosen, not to break the bowstrings. He wihsed to regenerate the public morals and to restore all hearts to virtue and nature.
He was deeply moved by the corruption of men and wished to destroy its germ by a severe education and by strong instiutions. "Today," he said to me, "one cannot propose a rigorous and salutary law, that intrigue, crime and fury do not lay hands on it and make it into an insturment of death, according to caprice and passion."
I witnessed his indignaiton at reading the law of 22 Prairial, in the headquaters garden of Marchiennes, by the bridge before Charleroy. But I must say he spoke only with enthusaim of the talents of Robespierre, for whom he cherished a sort of cult..
He sighed for the end of the Revolution, that he might give heimdelf up to his ordinaty meditaions, contemplate nature and enjoy the repose of private life in a rural home, with a person whim Heaven seemed to have destined for his companion and whose mind and heart he would have delighted to mold, far from the venomous meddling of city folk.
It is an atrocious slander to suppose him evil. Niether vengence nor hate ever entered his soul. I appeal to you, citizens of Blerancourt, under whose eyes his genius and his virtues grew. There are amoung you those whose politcal opinions have been courrupted by intriges, habits and passions, and who have outraged, slandered and persucted Saint-Just, because he walked a road contrary to that on which you entered.
Neverthless, after he became a member of the goverment, when you found yourselves led before the Revolutionary Tribunal for unpatriotic acts or words, you did not hesitated to invoke his witness and by his efforts you returned to your homes and enjoyed the embraces of your kin who never hoped to see you again. "They all have been my enemis," he said, speaking of you; "I owe them all my zeal and help, rovided public intrest of inflexible honesty do not require the sacrifce of thier liberty or lives." And he succeeded in saving you.
Pliant and socible in private matters, so he was somtimes iracible, severe, and inexorable when the courtny was involved. Then he became a lion, listening no longer, breaking down all barriers, trampling all considerations under foot and his austerity imparted fear to his friends and gave him such a somber, ferocious air with manners despotic and terrible, forcing him afterward to reflect on the immense danger involved in the exercise of absloute power, when it is entrused to man whose heads are not as well organized as thier hearts are pure.
Such was the man who, hardly twenty-seven, was cut down by a Revolution to which he had consercated his existance and who has left long regrets to his country and to his friendship.
Wow, that was long, sorry about any typos.
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