revolution_fr | Notes and Justificatory Documents (Reply)

These are basically the appendices to Charlotte Robespierre's memoirs. Some of them are, admittedly, rather random, but they're mostly fairly interesting. Again, due to length, this post is going to have to have two parts.

NOTES AND JUSTIFICATORY DOCUMENTS

No. 1.

Maximilien Robespierre’s dedication to the manes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

It is to you that I dedicate this page, manes of the citizen of Geneva! May it be that if he is called to see the day, he is placed beneath the aegis of the most eloquent and the most virtuous of men. Today more than ever we have need of eloquence and virtue. Divine man! You taught me to know myself; quite young, you made me appreciate the dignity of my nature, and reflect on the great principles of the social order. The old edifice has crumbled; the portico of a new edifice has been raised upon its ruins and, thanks to you, I have added my own stone to it. Receive my homage therefore; as feeble as it is, it must please you; I have never acclaimed the living.

I saw you in your last days, and this memory is a source of prideful joy for me; I contemplated your august features, I saw there the imprint of the black chagrin to which the injustice of men had condemned you. From then on I understood all the pains of a noble life devoted to the religion of truth; they did not frighten me. The confidence of having wanted to help one’s fellow men is the recompense of the virtuous man; the recognition of peoples, who crown his memory with the honors that his contemporaries denied him comes later. Like you, I would like to buy these benefits at the price of a laborious life, even at the price of a premature demise.

Called to play a role in the greatest events that have ever shaken the world; witness to the agonies of despotism and the reawakening of true sovereignty; near to seeing the storms built up from all quarters, and of which no human intelligence can guess all the results, burst; I owe to myself, and soon to my fellow citizens, an account of my thoughts and acts. Your example is there, before my eyes. Your admirable Confessions, that frank and intrepid emanation of the purest soul, will reach posterity less as a work of art than as a marvel of virtue. I want to follow in your venerable footsteps, even if I am to leave a world that the centuries to come will not know; I will be fortunate if, on the perilous path that a never before seen revolution has just opened before us, I remain forever faithful to the inspiration I have taken from your writings.

No. 2

Letter from Charlotte Robespierre to the editor of The Universal

24 May 1830.

Monsieur,

In your issue of the 5^th of this month, you contest the authenticity of the Memoirs of Maximilien Robespierre. In general there can be no reply to the rightness of your reasoning; but there is in this article a phrase conceived thus: “Yet the editor sought faithful documents, and, if what I have been told is true, he could have found them. An elder sister of Robespierre vegetates in Paris, in the most obscure corner of a Faubourg, and this woman is overwhelmed by age, poverty, and the weight of her dreadful name. Having bought a few rescued souvenirs from her, it was not difficult to compensate for what other biographers have omitted to rectify, errors in facts, errors in dates, etc. etc.”

What you have been told, Monsieur, is not only inexact, but it is false. It is true that Maximilien Robespierre’s sister, not his eldest, but his junior by twenty months, vegetates, overwhelmed with poverty, age, and, you could have added, serious and painful infirmities, in an obscure corner of the patrie that gave her birth; but she has constantly repulsed the offers of intriguers who, for the past thirty-six years, have tried numerous times to traffic with her name; but she has sold nothing to anyone; but she had had no relation direct or indirect with the editor of her brother’s so-called Memoirs; and those who have said that Maximilien Robespierre had known need in his childhood, and that he was a choirboy in the cathedral of Arras are imposters.

I regard, Monsieur, as injurious to my honor and my probity, the idea that anyone could have bought any rescued souvenirs from me. I belong to a family which has not been reproached with venality. I will bring to the tomb the name that I received from the most venerable of fathers, with the consolation that no one on earth can reproach me with a single act, in the long course of my life, which does not conform to the prescriptions of honor. As to my brothers, it is for history to pronounce definitively on them; it is for history to recognize one day whether Maximilien is really guilty of all the revolutionary excesses his colleagues accused him of after his death. I have read in the annals of Rome that two brothers were also outlawed, massacred in the public square, their bodies cast into the Tiber, their heads paid for in their weight in gold; but history does not day that their mother, who survived them, was ever blamed for having believed in their virtue.

Monsieur, I have the honor of saluting you,

ROBESPIERRE.

No. 3

Reply of M. de Fosseux to a letter written him by Maximilien Robespierre in sending him a copy of the eulogy of Gresset

Of the eulogizer of Vert-Vert I’ve prized the talents;

My ear, attentive to his tender accents,

Could not tire of listening to this lyre

Which a guilty delirium will never inspire.

But how much more sublime it appears to my eyes

Since, the possessor of a precious page,

I can, guided by you, better time my suffrage.

What! That touching eulogy where you render him homage,

Where you depict his wit, his interesting style,

Appeared insufficient to his fellow citizens!

May they fear that because of them his revered ashes

Do not obtain the glory prepared for Gresset.

What more was needed for a mortal’s honor?

For Gresset’s honor was an altar needed?

But while I protest against this decree,

This rigorous decree does not irritate your soul.

Fully insensible to its severity,

You only want to avenge posterity.

I speak of vengeance, and that modesty,

The faithful companion and the seal of genius,

Deigns to bestow its consoling care,

And brings a pure calm to the depths of your heart.

Yet do not go wishing to deprive your head

Of the immortal laurels that glory prepares you;

Think, for you must, on those unfortunates,

To disgrace, to shame, to affronts condemned;

They invoke you in a whisper amid infamy,

They ask for death, you return them to life.

A cruel prejudice disappears at your voice,[1]

Its fatal power cedes to milder laws.

Go, pursue your career, such a victory

Permits you to enter the temple of memory.

Yet forgetful of your glorious destiny,

You fix your eyes upon my obscurity:

And in my heart yours asks to find a place.

This is an act of justice, and you call it grace!

You dare to pronounce that sweet and flattering word

Which suits both your mouth and your heart.

Fear nothing; into my arms fly with assurance,

Support of the wretched, avenger of innocence;

You live for virtue, for sweet friendship,

And you can demand the half of my heart.

No. 4

Thanks to the Messieurs of the Rosati Society.

AIR: Resist me, beautiful Aspasie.

I see the thorn with the rose,

In the bouquets you offer me (repeat);

And when you celebrate me,

Your verses discourage my prose.

Everything charming that has been said to me,

Messieurs, is rightly confounding;

The rose is your compliment,

The thorn is the law of responding (repeat).

At this fete, so pretty,

Reigns the most perfect accord (repeat).

There are no better written couplets,

There is no flower better chosen.

I alone, I accuse my destinies

Of not having seen me to my place;

For the rose is, in our gardens,

What your verses are on Parnassus (repeat).

When I think of your kindness,

My word, I see no excess (repeat);

And the tableau of your success

Weakens my recognizance.

For such gardeners

Sacrifice is nothing much;

When one is so rich in laurels,

One can easily give a rose (repeat).

MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE.

No. 5

Charlotte Robespierre’s judgment on a portrait of her elder brother.

This portrait is nothing by an ignoble caricature; it does not resemble Maximilien Robespierre at all. It has distorted his physiognomy and his features as much as his cowardly enemies have distorted his character.

Those who want to examine the judgments that historians have brought against my brother without prejudice will see with what revolting prejudice they have written. This partiality is reproduced even in artists’ works: one sees them flatter the features of the powerful men of the day in their compositions; if they are painting a rather ugly personage, they make him into an Adonis; if his features are unpleasant, without character and without expression, they use their imagination to give him a noble character and an expression advantageous to his physiognomy; but when they want to represent my brother, they seek the blackest, the most hideous colors on their palettes to paint his features, while his physiognomy breathed gentleness and had an expression of kindness that struck everyone who saw him.

No. 6

Never before published letter from Madame Roland to Maximilien Robespierre.

(This letter has been inserted into the text, starting on page 67.)

[1] M. de Fosseux alludes here to the discourse of Maximilien that was crowned by the Society of Arts and Sciences of Metz.

I am sincerely sorry for my poor translation of the poetry, by the way; I tried to make it rhyme as much as possible, but in the end I just gave up. Or rather, I figured it was better to be accurate than poetic, per se, since it would be impossible to appraise the merit--or lack thereof--of any poem in translation in any case.