"it is of little profit," said robespierre severely, "that we should debate what may or may not come to pass in that time. you speak of more than a hundred years, and of a season when the youngest child before us shall have long been dead, and his child, too, perhaps be dead after him; and for that matter, even if it profited us, it would not be to the service of god, for we must say what is true and defend it. as for the rest, no man is master of destiny."
he was about to make an allusion to the people of epirus and to a discovery of theirs which he had read in the classics upon this subject, when st. just interrupted, as was his way, with burning eyes and a sort of high, rhetorical facility which gave all his young words such amazing power. he was sitting in an attitude one might have thought listless, so lightly did his delicate hand lean upon his knee, save that all thought of carelessness left one when one watched the intensity of his face. and he repeated a phrase which its rhythm has made famous,[pg 274] "the things we have said will never be lost on earth."
it was in the weeks after fleurus. charlotte robespierre, ill-tempered and silent, sat like a sort of guardian of the room upon the little sofa by the western wall of it, the darkest side. couthon was there, the cripple, his face permanently stretched by pain, and there also, almost foreign—english or italian one might have said from their length—shone the delicate features of fouché, his thin lips firm and inevitably ironical.
paris was glorious. there was a festivity in the sky of that july, a cool air in the sunlit streets, and that sort of clear sound which comes up from the gulfs of the narrow ways when paris in summer is at the full of its life. the sunlight upon the courtyard shone reflected from the white walls of it into the darkness of the little room where the friends sat talking together before they should go down to the parliament. in the shed outside was the noise of their host, the carpenter, sawing. a very quiet and respectful young man, the son of the house and secretary to robespierre, ventured an opinion. he had a wooden leg and his expression was not intelligent. when these two generations of men had passed, he said, the goddess liberty would be firm upon her throne. it would be the chief advantage of the passage of time that men would forget all the old days of slavery, and that the evil thing which the revolution was occupied in destroying would be[pg 275] remembered only as a sort of nightmare of humanity. the insolent palaces which might remind men of their tyrants will have been pulled down long ago, and their gew-gaws of pictures have been left to moulder. he foresaw and was about to describe at some length the reign of virtue and equality among men, when robespierre interrupted him severely in his high voice and bade him not to pirouette upon the stump of his wooden leg, which wore the carpet of the citizen his father, and was, moreover, an ungainly gesture. he further told him with increased severity that the arts in a state of free men would always be decently cherished, for but a few weeks before he had been delighted to sit for his portrait to m. greuze.
there was a little silence following this reprimand.
"if it be of any moment to you," he continued, "i can, i think, tell you some things certainly that society will hold. for they have invariably accompanied liberty in her majestic march. men will respect the labour and the property of others, and the power of peace and war will reside with the people. it is to this," he added earnestly, "that i have given my chief efforts, and i believe i have placed it upon a secure foundation. what i am most afraid of," he mused, "is the power that may be put into the hands of representatives. but that again will be tamed by long usage. i shall soon see to it that the places of meeting are made largely public, and i have drafted a design whereby it shall[pg 276] be death, or at least exile, to plan so much as a municipal building for the meetings of municipal bodies unless the galleries permit a full view of the debate, and accommodate a number of citizens not less than five times the total number of the elected. it would be better," he sighed in conclusion, "that a law should compel at intervals great meetings in the open, and should punish by the loss of civic power all those who did not attend, unless, indeed, they had been given leave of absence by some magistrate."
st. just was weary of the war, and asked him how long it would continue.
"it will continue," said robespierre firmly, and in the tone of a man who can speak more definitely of near things than of distant, "it will continue until the winter at least, upon which occasion i design...."
at this point charlotte, whose temper was not improved by such discourses, abruptly left them. they heard the sharp hurrying of her footsteps cross the flags of the courtyard; she was going up to her own room overlooking the street. fouché smiled.
"you smile, fouché," said robespierre, displaying very obvious irritation, "because you think, as politicians do, that war is an unaccountable thing. let me tell you that reason here is much stronger than chance, and that the forces opposed to us are already convinced of liberty. i have before me" (he pulled out his little brown book from his pocket) "a list of pamphlets recently distributed beyond the frontiers,[pg 277] and a very good estimate of the numbers of their readers."
fouché restrained his smile; he was a man capable of self-control to any limit. he leant his long, delicate, refined head upon the tapering fingers of his left hand, and listened with great apparent interest to what the master was saying. the sawing in the courtyard without ceased, and his host, the carpenter, entered in that reverential way which marks the sentiment of religion, and very silently took a distant chair to listen to the master's discourse. couthon shifted himself in his place to relieve his crippled members, and robespierre continued—
"nothing endures unless it be based upon virtue, but though virtue tends to corrupt with time, and though liberty is rather for what the fanatics have called 'angels' than for men, yet if men's chains are broken it has great chance of permanence and of effect upon the public. i have upon this matter," he continued, pulling out of a pocket a shagreen case and from that case a pair of spectacles, "certain notes that will not be without interest for you."
fouché sighed while robespierre was seeking among a group of neatly-folded papers for what he had to read. his host, the carpenter, bent forward to hear as a man might bend forward to hear the reading of the gospel. he even had an odd instinct to stand up and listen with bowed head. st. just[pg 278] was thinking of other things. and certainly any modern man looking on would have been compelled to watch st. just's deep and luminous eyes. he had already forgotten the future, and once again he was thinking of the wars. he had begun to take pleasure in the charges. a moment might have made him, from the poet that he was, a soldier; and while the high thin voice of the little man robespierre went on with appropriate gestures, describing the permanence of virtue in a free state, he clearly saw what he had seen but a few days before from the lines: the houses of the beleaguered city against the june dawn, and he heard the bugles.
robespierre had begun: "the sentiment of property which is native in man proceeds from what he gives to nature by his toil, and this is respected by all, yet even property itself cannot be thought secure until virtue be there to guarantee it, no laws can make up for its absence. it is virtue, therefore, upon which even this essential, without which society cannot be, reposes. and virtue which will cause a poor man to be equal with the rich, while the one regards the other without envy upon the one side, without contempt upon the other."
for a full quarter of an hour robespierre went on, and couthon, as a matter of ritual, and the master of the house as a matter of religion, listened: the one as a matter of course, the other ardently. and when he had finished his little peroration, when he had taken off those spectacles and wiped them, when he[pg 279] had turned upon them his pale, small, watchful, grey-green eyes, he noted that fouché alone had been inconstant. fouché had his back turned and was looking out of a window. a boy who passed through the courtyard whistling, carrying a short ladder, looked at the window for a moment and saw the aquiline, refined face covered with laughter. the boy thought that laughter merely friendly. he waved his hand and smiled an answer, and fouché saw in that boy the generation that should arise. he composed his features and turned them once more towards the room. before robespierre could speak sharply, as he meant to speak, and complain of such inattention, he said in a clear, well-modulated voice, that he had never heard those sentences before. was robespierre to pronounce them that day in parliament?
"i shall do so," said robespierre, "if i am permitted by the president to speak. if not, i will reserve my remarks for another occasion." he pulled out a fat little round watch prettily enamelled, touched the lace at his wrists, settled the order of his stock, and said as a schoolmaster might say it to young st. just: "are you not coming with me?"
st. just, startled suddenly like a man awakened, thought of the hour, remembered the parliament, and went out with his friend.
fouché with his hand to his chin crossed the courtyard and went up the stairs to that part of the[pg 280] house which overlooked the rue st. honoré. he had something to say to charlotte. couthon, who was hungry, remained to lunch, but he found his hosts dull and a little ill-tempered. he could not fill the void that had been left by robespierre.
richard clay & sons, limited, london and bungay.
