As promised...

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Chapter Two

 

Maximilien Robespierre’s return to his family.—His debut at the bar.—His disinterestedness.—His way of life.—His private mores.—His attachment to Mademoiselle Deshorties.—His relations with the aristocracy of Arras.—His friends and enemies.—The Society of Arts and Sciences of Metz award a prize to one of Robespierre’s discourses.—The Society of the Rosatis and the Academy of Arras receive him as a member.—Augustin Robespierre.—Portrait of the two brothers.—Maximilien is named a member of the criminal tribunal of Arras.—He is elected to the Estates-General.—Mirabeau’s judgment of Robespierre.

 

            Maximilien’s return to his family, among whom he came to fix himself, was a day of celebration for all; our friends cried with us for tenderness. My brother was universally loved. The sweetness of his character and the purity of his heart were known and everyone was anxious to count him among his friends.

            He began his career at the bar with the greatest distinction. His first defenses attracted everyone’s attention. I am often questioned on the cause of my brother’s great successes as a lawyer. Maximilien had much talent, his speech was easy, his logic pressing; but I do not believe that these eminent qualities sufficed by themselves to found his reputation: I believe that what contributed most is the choice of his cases, to place it in evidence; he took only just cases, and refused those which were not; also he almost always won them. Many very important cases were confided to him, within which he deployed a truly superior capacity.

            I always saw him act with much disinterestedness. When one of his clients came to consult him on some litigious affair, he looked less to confirm him in the resolution to plead than to bring him together with the adverse party and reconcile their differences. He charged himself with a preference to defend the poor, and often opened his purse to him in place of demanding honorariums of him. Sometimes the two contrary parties, in the same trial, would solicit him to take their cause in hand; Maximilien did not hesitate; he opted for him of the two pleaders, was he the poorer, and even if he would receive no money from him, whose pretensions seemed founded to him. It may be seen that he did not make a speculation of his profession, and that he subordinated all to the question of justice. There is what made it be said that he was the support of the oppressed and the avenger of innocence.

            I should enter into some details on the sort of life that Maximilien had adopted.

            He worked much, and passed a great part of the time he did not pass at the courts in his study. He rose at six or seven in the morning, and worked until eight. His barber then came to fix his wig. Then he took a light meal, which consisted of dairy products, and went back to his work until ten, when he dressed and went to the courts. After the assembly he came for dinner; he ate little and drank only watered wine; he showed no preference for any particular foods. Many times I asked him what he wanted for dinner; he responded that he knew nothing about it. He liked fruit, and the only thing he could not do without was a cup of coffee. After dinner he went out for an hour’s walk or to make a visit. He returned then, and withdrew anew into his study until seven or eight; he passed the rest of the evening either with friends or among his family.

            My aunts and I, we reproached him with often being distracted, preoccupied in our gatherings; in effect, when we played cards, or when we spoke only of insignificant things, he retired to a corner of the apartment, ensconced himself in an armchair, and gave himself up to his reflections as if he had been alone. However, he was naturally gay; he knew how to be pleasant, and sometimes laughed until he cried.

            Maximilien was of an even humor; he opposed no one, and went along with what we others wanted. How many times did my aunts say to me: “Your brother is an angel; he has all moral virtues, he is made to be the dupe and the victim of the vicious too.”

            However, it must not be believed that this gentleness of mores, this goodwill excluded my elder brother from having an unyielding firmness of character. To the contrary, he had with in him a power of will, an indomitable energy. His conduct at the head of the government for almost two years has proved that he was made of bronze and granite; but within him this energy, this inflexibility was allied with an amenity of manners which enchanted all those who saw him in his interior. I defy anyone who has seen Maximilien frequently to speak to the contrary. All those who had intimate rapport with him, who say him in those moments when his heart opened and he showed himself such as he is, will agree that if no one could have managed the government with a more vigorous hand, neither could anyone be more sweet and moderate in his private life. How to explain this? It is that beside an exquisite sensibility, there were profound convictions within him, and that, when these convictions spoke, they were obeyed.

            My brother’s amiability with women captivated their affection. Some of them, I believe, felt more than an ordinary sentiment for him. One among others, Mademoiselle Deshorties, loved him, and was loved in return. The father of this young person had taken for his second wife, one of our aunts; from his first marriage he had two sons and three daughters. When my brother was elected deputy to the Estates-General, he had courted Mademoiselle Deshorties for two or three years. Many times already the question of marriage had come up, and very probably Maximilien would have married her, if the suffrage of his fellow citizens had not removed him from the sweetness of private life and thrown him into a career in politics. Mademoiselle Deshorties, who had sworn to him that she would ever belong only to him, took no account of this oath, and, during the session of the Constituent Assembly, gave her hand to another. My brother learned of this betrayal only upon his return to Arras, after the closing of the Assembly; he was very grievously affected.

            Maximilien’s successes at the bar showed him in relation with many persons belonging to the aristocratic class; he was very sought after; the first houses of Arras were happy to receive him. If my brother had loved fortune and honors, it is certain that he would have been able to satisfy this passion in marrying one of the rich heiresses of Arras; but his disinterestedness and his indifference towards that which concerned his own affairs always brought him away from this idea.

            He had many friends whom he loved much. Of this number was M. Leduc, retired lawyer, a man of quite distinguished merit; M. Aimé, canon of the cathedral of Arras, whom his fellow canons had nicknamed the wise; M. Devic, also a canon of the same cathedral, who had been a teacher at the collège Louis-le-Grand when Maximilien studied there; they loved each other like two brothers; M. Buissart, intensely estimable savant; MM. Langlois, Charamant, Ensart, etc., all young lawyers with much talent. My brother believed he could count among his friends MM. de Rusé, avocat-général; Dubois de Fosseux, who was since mayor of Arras, etc; but he later recognized that their friendship was not sincere.

            I’ve just cited the names of his veritable and false friends; but I will pass the names of his enemies, for he some, in silence. Who could have believed that a man as sweet and of such a likeable commerce would have enemies? It is because he had merit, much merit, and there are some men who do not pardon merit in other men, as certain women do not pardon beauty in other women. When my brother was told that he had enemies, he did not want to believe it; he sad: What have I done to them? I know well what he had done to some of them; he did not want to ally himself with them, because they had reprehensible mores or an equivocal probity. You will get an idea of the injustice of men when you know that many of my brother’s enemies only grief against him was that they had seen him in the street, he had not seen them, and by consequence had not bid them good day. Maximilien was extremely distracted, or rather, he was always preoccupied;[1] sometimes he passed his most intimate friends without seeing them. There is what gave place to the accusation of pride that his enemies carried against him. He, proud! He who ever saw in all men but brothers! He who was the most ardent apostle of equality! It is thus that his character and his intention have always been studied to be denatured, and that the most innocent things are imputed to crime.

            Let the extent that Maximilien was distracted be judged by the following incident: once we passed the evening together at the home of one of our friends, and we were returning home at a well-advanced hour, when all-of-a-sudden, my brother, no longer recalling that I was with him, doubled his stride, left me behind, arrived at the house alone, and withdrew into his study. I arrived some minutes after him. I had found his distraction so amusing that, seeing him taken in so rapid a stride, I had let him go without letting him know that I was with him. I entered his study, where I found him already dressed in his robe, and working very attentively. He asked me with an air of surprise from where I came alone so late. I responded that if I returned alone, it is because he left me in the middle of the street to come back precipitously. He then recalled this circumstance, and we, both of us, laughed at so comical an adventure.

            The career of the bar is not the only one in which my brother distinguished himself; he dabbled successfully in the career of letters. The Society of Arts and Sciences of Metz made a contest, in the year 1784 or 1785, of the following question: “What is the origin of the opinion which extends upon all the individuals of one family a part of the shame attached to the infamous punishments which the guilty is submitted to? Is this opinion more harmful than useful?” My brother, whom justice revolted, eagerly seized this occasion to denounce a prejudice too universally accepted, and entered in the contest a discourse in which he very eloquently discussed the two questions proposed, and resolved the second in an affirmative manner.

            Maximilien’s discourse won a prize. I do not have it in my hand at the moment; but the arguments with which it condemned the iniquitous prejudice which attaches an ineffaceable shame upon an entire family, because in this family one criminal is found; these arguments still strike me with their force and their power. Oh my brother, you did not predict, in writing this discourse, that one day your unhappy sister, victim of the same prejudice, would be persecuted, and shamed because she belongs to that Robespierre, the most virtuous of men, whom calumny has disfigured and made to pass for a monster. My brother! When you asked your heart, so pure, your conscience, so pure, you were far from suspecting that one day the sole remaining member of your family would not know where to rest her head, because the vicious had stained your reputation. Go, do not believe, cherished shadow, that the debasing stigmas that your calumniators have attached to our name would ever make me blush. I am proud to carry your name; it is glorious to be of your blood, to belong to the great Robespierre, who was the inflexible enemy of all injustice, of all corruption, and who now would be extolled by those who create history to the gages of the aristocracy, if he had made pacts with the people’s oppressors.[2]

            Maximilien entered a contest once more; the Academy of Amiens had made a contest of an Elegy of Gresset; my brother sent a discourse which obtained but an honorable mention, the only one which was given, for the prize was not awarded to any of the competitors. When his discourse was sent to be printed, he sent a copy to his friends, who thanked him in prose and verse. M. de Fosseux distinguished himself especially with extremely mediocre verses, within which he gave my brother elegies on his virtues, he who would later pass into the ranks of those who denied these same virtues. I have kept a copy of M. de Fosseux’s verses.[3]

            My brother was a member of the Society of the Rosatis, composed of savants, magistrates, military men, etc. all dabblers in writing, or amateurs of letters and the arts. This Society had gatherings on fixed days, when works of all genres were read, and where literary discussions took place. There was a festival when a new member was admitted; the member-elect made a speech; one of the members replied, and the festival terminated with a gay repast where frankness and cordiality reigned. The day my brother was received into the Society of the Rosatis, he improvised a son in three couplets, which was greeted with lively applause. I still have a copy of this song, written in my brother’s hand.[4]

            Maximilien was similarly received as a member of the Academy of Arras, most of which members made part of the Society of the Rosatis.

            I have not yet spoken of my brother Augustin; it will easily be understood why: Augustin remained at the collège Louis-le-Grand as long as Maximilien, and in consequence returned to Arras but a few years before the Revolution. Augustin, as all the persons who knew him said, had more natural talents than Maximilien; nature showed itself more prodigious in its gifts in his regard; but he had less aptitude for work than my elder brother; study did not have as much attraction for him. Maximilien and I, we often reproached his idle tastes to him; we exhorted him to create some occupations for himself; sometimes our remonstrance made Augustin withdraw into himself; he put himself to his work with an ardor to lively to be durable; enclosed in his chamber he passed many days with books; but he could not long support this constraint. I must say, in addition, despite the little dissensions among us that would follow, and of which I will speak when the time comes, my brother Augustin was good and sensible, his heart was formed on the model of Maximilien’s, and except the words of some women I will name, good harmony would not have ceased for a sole instant to reign among us.

            If I had to place my two brothers side by side, I would say that in the elder civil courage was carried to a higher point than with the younger; but on the other hand, in Augustin, military courage was incomparably more developed than with Maximilien. Robespierre jeune was an excellent military man; nothing surprised him, he was intrepid; at the head of a regiment or a division he worked wonders; he was a Caesar. My elder brother, in his study, quill in hand or as well at the tribune, made all the tyrants of Europe tremble; but there his role was limited, and with difficulty could he have resolved himself to don the harness to fight them with iron, or to descend into public places armed with a musket. Would the Thermidorians have obtained so easy a triumph, if Maximilien, exchanging his tribune’s toga for the general’s sword, placed himself at the head of the immense people who, the evening of 9 Thermidor, pressed around the Hotel-de-Ville, and awaited but a gesture from my elder brother to take him wherever he might have wanted? I know that a powerful consideration halted him; when it was said to him: Let us call the people to insurrection; he responded: In whose name?—In the name of the Convention, Saint-Just cried; the Convention is wherever we are. Saint-Just was right; and if Robespierre had envisioned the question from the same point of view, and had above all sensed the necessity to march at the head of the insurgent people, the patrie would have been saved.

            Augustin was great, well formed, and had face full of nobility and beauty. In this last aspect, Maximilien had not so great a share as he; he was of middling form and delicate complexion. His face breathed sweetness and goodwill, but it was not as regularly handsome as that of his brother. He was almost always smiling. A great number of portraits of my brother have been published. The one which resembles him most of all of them is the one by Delpech. There are some others which are but odious charges dedicated to disfiguring his traits, to give them a ferocious expression, as his soul was wont to be presented in one day as ghastly. He who is placed at the head of the pretended Memoirs of Maximilien Robespierre is of this number.[5]

            The consideration my elder brother enjoyed in Arras, made him named a member of the criminal tribunal by the bishop of this city. This prelate had the nomination of these sorts of charges. He exercised the functions which had been confided in him with exemplary equity. But it always cost him to condemn. An assassin having one day come before the tribunal of which Maximilien was a member, against him the strongest penalty needed to be pronounced, and that was death. There was no way to modify this dreadful penalty; the charges were too damning. My elder brother returned home with despair in his heart, and took no food for two days. I know well that he is guilty, he always repeated, that he is a villain, but to put a man to death!!... This thought was insupportable to him; no longer wishing to have to fight between the voice of his conscience and the cry of his heart, he resigned from his functions as judge.

            When it was a question of electing deputies to the Estates-General, all gazes were fixed on my elder brother; I should not say all gazes, for there were men in Arras, and this number was small, whom Maximilien’s pleadings and writings had shocked; they said that his expressions were strange; they could not become accustomed to the words liberty, equality, fraternity, etc. These men were the impassioned admirers of the ancien regime and bitterly disapproved of anything innovative. Despite their opposition, Maximilien Robespierre was elected deputy to the Estates-General by the Third Estate of Arras. Certainly he merited this mark of his fellow citizens’ confidence by his antecedents, his talent, and his virtues. No one understood better than he the duties that his title of representative of the people imposed on him and no one fulfilled the delicate functions with which he was charged with more unlimited devotion, or rarer disinterestedness. His independent votes weighed always against abuses and the arbitrary; some people wanted to seduce him and did not succeed; many methods were employed and all remained unsuccessful. Finally, one day, a considerable sum was taken to him, in praying him to distribute it to the poor; he saw the trap offered him, refused the sum, and invited the person who had offered it to carry out these generosities himself. The well-known character of my elder brother made his colleagues in the Constituent Assembly name him the Incorruptible. When Mirabeau saw all the attempts made to buy my brother like he had been bought himself, he said: “There will be no success there; it is to waste one’s time to want to corrupt Robespierre; this man has no needs, he his sober, and he has very simple mores.”

            What an elegy!

 

 

               

 

           

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[1] Maximilien Robespierre’s sister, in one of the conversations that I’ve had with her, recounted to me, to show me to what point her brother was distracted, that one day he came to dinner before the table was entirely set; the stew had already been set out; he took a seat at the table and, without noting that there was no plate in front of him, took a spoonful of stew and ladled it onto the tablecloth.

[2] A propos of the apocryphal Memoirs which were published in 1850, under the name of Robespierre, a very obscure—and quite worthy of being so—journal, The Universal, had the cowardice to insult Charlotte Robespierre, in saying that she had trafficked in her non-effaced memories, and that she had thus put the authors of these Memoirs to at least supply what other biographers had omitted. Charlotte Robespierre wrote a sublime letter on this subject to the editor of The Universal, which did not insert it. This was to crown a first cowardice with a new cowardice; or rather it was to tacitly recognize that they had lied, for to close their columns to a reclamation, is, on the part of a journalist of bad faith, to admit that this reclamation has no reply, and that it destroys the assertion which provoked it. Charlotte Robespierre gave me a copy of this letter more than years ago, in praying me not to render it public until after her death. I have conformed to her desire. It is this same letter which has been published by the Retrospective Review. It may be read at the end of these Memoirs (see pieces of justification, number 2). L.

[3] See pieces of justification, number 5.

[4] This copy is now in my possession. I’ve published it following these memoirs.

[5] Some time before her death, Charlotte Robespierre gave me a copy of this portrait, in the margin of which she had written what she thought of it. I believe it is my duty to publish this appreciation of a portrait which passes for being that of Robespierre, and which has no more his resemblance than the Memoirs that Moreau Rosier has published under his name are his work. (See pieces of justification, number 3.) L.

Forgive me if part of that doesn't read properly; Charlotte uses a lot of strange phrases.

It also happens to be Marat's death day, on a random note.