ROBESPIERRE'S ORIGIN. 493 bear witness that his principles do not enrich their votary. -Though seldom listened to at the National Assembly, he excels and will ever excel at the Jacobins. He is the society itself,— nothing more or less, expressing it perfectly, moving with it at the same pace, without ever outstepping it. We will follow him very closely and attentively, noting and dating every degree in his prudent career, and noting likewise on his pale countenance the deep traces that will be made by the Revolution, the untimely wrinkles of vigils, and the furrows of meditation. It is necessary to relate his history before we describe him. The artificial product of fortune and labour, he was but little indebted to nature; and we should not comprehend him if we were not thoroughly acquainted with the circumstances which produced him, and the strong will that made him what he was. Few men were ever more unfortunate. First, he suffered repeated disasters in his family and in his fortune; next, he was adopted and protected by the upper clergy,—a world of great lords, hostile to the ideas, and averse to that spirit of the age which the young man shared. Then, he emerged from his earlier misfortune only to fall back into one still greater,—the necessity of proving ungrateful. The Robespierres had been, from father to son, notaries at Carvin, near Lille. The most ancient document that I have found relating to them is one of the year 1600.* They are supposed to have come over from Ireland. Their ancestors, perhaps, formed, in the sixteenth century, a part of those numerous Irish colonies which came over to people the monasteries and seminaries on the coast, where they received from the Jesuits a sound education of wranglers and cavillers. These seminaries have educated, among others, Burke and O'Connell. In the eighteenth century, the Robespierres sought for a wide field. One branch of the family remained near Carvin; but the other settled at Arras, a great ecclesiastical, political, and juridical centre, a city of provincial states and upper tribunals, abounding with business and law-suits. In no place did the nobility and the clergy hold their sway more despotically. There were especially two princes or rather two kings of Arras, *M. Gentil's collection, at Lille. 494 ORPHAN AT AN EARLY AGE. the bishop, and the powerful abbé de Saint-Waast, to whom about one-third of the city belonged. The bishop had preserved the seigneurial right of appointing judges to the criminal tribunal. Even at the present day, his immense palace buries the half of Arras in its shadow. Damp and dismal streets, with expressive names, Rue du Conseil, Rue des Rapporteurs, &c., reminding one of a chancery life, wind about the walls of this palace. It was in the last-mentioned street, the most dismal and solitary of all, in a very decent respectable-looking house, that an industrious honest lawyer of the council of Artois lived, worked, and wrote night and day, and who became father to Robespierre in the year 1758.* He was rich only in esteem and domestic felicity; but having had the misfortune to lose his wife, the hopes of his life were shattered. He fell into an inconsolable despondency, became incapable of managing his business, and ceased to plead. Being advised to travel, he departed; but no news was ever received from him; nor does anybody know what became of him. Four children remained forsaken in that large deserted house. Maximilien, the eldest, found himself, in his tenth or eleventh year, the head of the family, the guardian, as it were, of his brother and two sisters. His character immediately changed; and he became, what he ever remained, wonderfully serious; his countenance could relax, and a kind of feigned smile even became later its habitual expression, but his heart remained sad for ever. Though so young, he found himself at once a father, a master, a director for the little family, with which he would reason and discourse. This premature little man was the best pupil at the college of Arras; and the abbé de Saint-Waast was easily induced to confer upon so excellent a scholar one of the presentations in his gift for the college of Louis-le-Grand. He arrived, therefore, all alone at Paris, separated from his brother and sisters, and without any other recommendation than one to a canon of Nôtre-Dame, to whom he became much attached. But his illfortune followed him; the canon died shortly after; and he * And not in 1759. M. Degeorge has had the goodness to forward to me, from Arras, the certificate of Robespierre's birth, lately discovered. HIS LITERARY ATTEMPTS. 495 learned at the same time the death of one of his sisters, the youngest and most fondly loved. Within those high and dismal walls of Louis-le-Grand, blackened by the shadow of the Jesuits, and in those deep courts where the sun so seldom appears, the orphan would walk alone, little sympathising with the happy and noisy youths about him. The others who had parents, and, in the holidays, enjoyed the intercourse of domestic affection and the world, felt less the stern impression of this sad education, which blights the bloom of the heart and destroys it with its pestilential breath. But it left a deep impression on the soul of Robespierre. Being an orphan and a friendless scholar, he was obliged to protect himself by his own merit, efforts, and exemplary conduct. Much more is expected from an exhibitioner than from any other pupil. He is bound to succeed. The good places. and the prizes which are a reward for others, are a tribute for the poor scholar, a payment he must make to his protectors. This position was humiliating, sad, and cruel; yet it does not appear to have much altered the character of Camille Desmoulins, who was also an exhibitioner of the clergy. The latter was younger, but Danton was of about the same age as Robespierre, and studied in the same classes. Seven or eight years were passed in this manner. Next came the study of the law, as usual, and the business of attorney. Robespierre, though naturally a logician, an arguer, and fond of abstract reasoning, succeeded very indifferently; he could not accustom himself to the sophistry of the bar and to the subtleties of chancery. Imbued with the ideas of Rousseau, Mably, and the philosophers of the age, he could not well manage to descend from the region of generalities. He was obliged to return to Arras, and pass a provincial existence. As a Lauréat of Louis-le-Grand, he was well received, and gained some success in the world and in academic literature. The academy of the Rosati, which bestowed roses as the prize of poetry, also admitted Robespierre. He could make rhymes as well as another. He competed for the eulogy on Gresset, and gained the second prize; next, for a more serious subject: "The reversibility of crime, and the disgrace incurred by the relatives of the criminal." But all this is mere pastoral sentimentality, very weakly written; by which, however, the youthful 496 CRIMINAL JUDGE AT ARRAS. author made a more tender impression upon a young lady of that place. This young lady had sworn she would espouse no other but, on returning from a journey, he found her married. The clergy, naturally proud of such a protégé, remained very favourably disposed towards him. He had obtained from the abbé of Saint-Waast the favour that he would give his young brother the presentation he had held at the college of Louis-leGrand; and he was also named by the bishop member of the criminal court; but having been obliged to condemn an assassin to death, his sister assures us that he was so painfully affected by it, that he sent in his resignation. However this may be, he acted wisely, on the eve of the Revolution, to abandon the odious profession of judge of the ancient system, appointed by priests. He turned advocate. It. was certainly better to reconcile his opinions and his life, live on little or nothing, and wait. Though very poor, it is said that, with a praiseworthy scruple, he would not plead every kind of cause, but made a selection.. But great was his embarrassment when some of the peasantry came to intreat him to plead for them against the Bishop of Arras. He examined their case, and found it just at that period no other advocate probably would have dared to support it against that sovereign of the town. Robespierre, who considered an advocate as a magistrate, cast sentiment, propriety, and gratitude at the feet of justice, and pleaded against his protector. No country was better calculated than Artois to form fervent partisans of liberty; for none suffered more from clerical and feudal tyranny. The whole of the land belonged to nobles and ecclesiastic noblemen. That mockery of states which the province possessed, seemed a systematic outrage against justice and reason, the Third-Estate being represented therein by some twenty mayors nominated by the lords of the manor. They, the Latour-Maubourgs, the d'Estourmels, the Lameths, and others, held the administration fast in their own hands like an hereditary possession: an admirable and rare administration in its progress towards absurdity, as one of the Lameths himself * I think she must be the person alluded to in the motto on Robespierre's first portrait (in M. Saint-Albin's collection): he looks very young, effeminate, and void of expression, with a rose in one hand, and the other on his heart, with these words underneath-" Tout pour mon amie." MEMBER OF THE STATES-GENERAL. 497 confesses. First, every possessor of a fief had votes; next, it was required that a voter must have an estate with a tower (terre à clocher), and four degrees of nobility; later, they were obliged to prove seven degrees: and, on the eve of the Revolution, the administration would not be satisfied with less than ten degrees of nobility. We cannot be surprised if this eminently retrograde province deputed to the States-General a rigid partisan of the new ideas, if this man ignorant of petty prevarication, and acquainted with only the straight road of justice, brought to the Revolution a kind of geometrical spirit,the square, the compass, and the level. Although he had left Arras behind him, he still found Arras on the benches of the Assembly,-I mean the lasting hatred of the prelates towards their protégé, their deserter, and the contempt of the lords of Artois, for an advocate, brought up by charity, and now sitting by their side. This well-known malevolence could not fail to add to the timidity of the new member, which was extreme. He confessed to Etienne Dumont that when he ascended the tribune he trembled like a leaf. Nevertheless, he was successful. When, in the month of May, 1789, the clergy came in a perfidious manner to intreat the Third-Estate to have compassion on the poor people and to begin their labours, Robespierre made a vehement bitter reply, and, feeling himself supported by the approbation of the Assembly, he obeyed the impulse of his passion, and was eloquent. Having been absent on the night of the 4th of October, and sorry at having missed so fine an opportunity, he eagerly seized the perilous circumstance of the 5th of October. When Maillard, the orator of the women, came to harangue the Assembly, all the deputies were hostile or mute; but Robespierre arose, and twice supported Maillard. This serious step decided his destiny, pointing out this timid man as infinitely bold and dangerous, and showing to his friends especially that such a man would not be bound to any party, nor follow passively any discipline. Then it was, according to every appearance, the Jacobin nobles agreed among themselves that this ambitious man should be the ridicule of the Assembly, the man who amuses and must necessarily amuse everybody, without any distinction of party. In the |