THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2803, 4 December 1907, Page 78

THE SKETCHER.

TERRORISTS AS FAMILY ME**.* jßy T. P., in TL P.'s Weekly.^ *££ One of the probleigir-ki hjeflSa^ljdstory : which has never ceas&lt^iitleTSß&m?, and at ~4fg| same time mi^nevinr*'ceasey itp^ puaaite; me, is the temper of the leading ' figures" ii^th^JßSrendji .Reign of '^terror. ' There a^^|fflx|s|,ajpqngt these Terrorists afc *&<%,MMK™Qwfc< it til -grow* pole~*u Robaspierr^Alarat, Couthon, St. Jugfe*: \ Apparently all posterity, knows ori? feels 1 about theaft is., that "they, \iere AOtnrething approaching hdjfaicidjil luni^fics,-- -That- ,I^, mayf-eall Jack the Rippers in ihe domainof politics, and . tfiey are so dismissed to ' j take theitv place" i» -the Gbfamber of ,JTor- j I rors ■whichljustory iae .constructed" fer the | ; moptefs tfcaj^have wielded Jsoi, abueeoV! 1 potsap." And <y«t thefts* must, have been" "i another side to -the** met; ,4&ere J are few'pejople whe^tlo not-iead thY- Story 1 , of Charlotte Corday and her assassination ; j of Marat with unquestioning admiration for ihe heroic-, girl who' dared to_~put an ' -end to an inhuman monster, and thereby j j came to the rescue of hundreds, if not j . thousands, of innocent human .being* j j whom he was determined to 'send "fo the j I slaughterhouse. But the curious thing is , I that the verdict of posterity is ! in direct conflict with the verdict • of .; j Marat's contemporaries. When he ! was murdered there Tose — and es- , ' pecjally from the masses — a wail of prq-,_ j foupd>'and sincere' "grief ;'he, and not fihes, 1 inspired ai^Jb^autafuV* young, woman i*ko/-> i killed him, was regarded as the hero and i the martyr;' the poor, -w"hose sufferings | had. created the French Revolutions] mo@|6d in him the friend "and ", chahvj pion who hrd given them the first gleams : of hope an 1 the first promise of liberty ; ! his.' funeral was a- great- and solemn cere--| ■monyjjjwith all Paris following his bier] ! in teats; and Murat, destined to- be' the . ' brother-in-law of Napoleon and to wear a ! i crot^n^was only one of the many young ; ; mefc oCthe d|y; whov^adly changed tlfcsir j original namee- to some nam^ like .tihat-j of the ,4^ def&gPK 11 * J^'&MBnifcf^<|heir j reverence^ and fclftSr^afiectloir. ■ If y»tf con- j suit contemporary records with regard to ; Robespierre, you find the same remarkable ( l and even - astounding, contrast between the, i verdict of posterity and the verdict of his contemporaries and his inI t-imates. He was literally adored by the , little humble family in which he lived ; j ' the masses always to the end regarded him as their friend and their champion; he 1 wa6 ultimately killed, not by the decree j of the people at large, but by rival politi- j cians who hated and feared him. Couthon, ( almost the- most sanguinary of his com- , rades m the Committee of Public Safety, was almost a saint in appearance and expression, mild, gentle, suave, pitiful. St. ; Just was so palpable a fanatic that Danton used to speak of him as holding his head ac high as though it were the Holy j Sacrament. And when the final houi j came of the Terror and the Terrorists, ' there were several noble souls who might have escaped, but who preferred to rush ', to the side of 6O sainted a leader as ; Robespierre and die by his side. What ' is the explanation of this remarkable phenomenon? Can we by any means get inside the time and the men, and. seeing them from that standpoint, understand eomething of their inner lives, purposes, characters, and find out — Which Verdict was the Just One— , the verdict of posterity - that execrates, or of their contemporaries who venerated ! and loved them? I This is the question which has beenhaunting me during my recent travels on the Continent while I have been reading three bulky volumes written by M. Le ; notre. M. Lenotre is already well known to students of the French Revolution as one of the most diligent delvers- in that exhaustless mine, and as the master of a picturesque and dramatic style, which makes live again the" scenes and the men and women of those strange times. At this moment many people are reading in the translation just published by Mr Heinemann his history of the execution •f M&ri9 Antoinette ; a fascinating volume which I read several years ago in the original French, and which I am erlad to see placed within reach of the English ' public. These three volumes, bulky as they are, can be read with almost breathless attention from the first pacre to the last ; there is not a chapter which does not pulsate with fervid interest. I should judge that M. Lenotre belonged to the enemies of the French Revolution, and that- with all his palpably honest effort to be impartial and to present the portraits o! these Revolutionaries from the purely objective point of view, he does lean to the side of strong condemnation of them, their acts, and their policy, and one is obliged to take some discount off his judgments. But he does, as I have said, make an honest effort to be impartial, and his j portraits therefore make only the more ' insoluble that difficult problem which I started by setting forth : How is it that th^ee men could be guilty of such public ( rimes, and at the same time be so admirable, 6O loving, and co lovable in the intimacies of family and social life? ' I begin with a glimpse at the interior I of the petty apartments which were occupied by Robespierre. It will be remembered that the family in which Robespierre spent his last days was \hat of Duplay, a small Parisian tradesman. The house exists still ; it is very different in aspect to-day from what it was in the days when it was occupied by Robespierre and the Duplay family. Now big buildings frown down upon a little paved court- | yard thai seems little better than a dark well ; but in those other days this courtyard was a small garden, with little plots I of flowers here and there, which were tended by the fair hands of the four daughters of the hoii/seiioU! — all true Parisian women in their love of beauty, of * "Vieilles Maifon*- Vieux Papiers." far G. Lencrtre. (Paris: Perrin.)

order, . in their industry and simplicity, and in then* pathetic attempt to bring into the squalor of city life some far-off reminder of beauty of field and flower and the high and blue sky. It was- in this courtyard that ' ' . , — Robespierre^- ; . used to have his simple breakfast — it was nearest approach he could get to, that breakiast in the open air .which is one of the healthy habits, and even passions, of the frenchman : the breakfast consisted simply of a' cup of milk. Robespierre had come there one day when a mob was following him with hoots and hustlings, and M. Duplay, good, kindly man, sharing the great man's dreams of a"Bew heaven upon earth, after the fashion dreamed by Jean Jacques Rousseau, passing by, ve&caed the persecuted saint, took him into his humble rooms, and there Robespierre, finding himself comfortable, determined to remain, transferring that very day his small effects from his lodgings in the Rue de Saint onge. You can well understand what a flutter it caused in all these young female bosoms when they heard that their lodger was no less a person than that dictator — half-feared, half-adored, saint in their eys, demon in the e}-es of his enemies — whose name then was more on the lips of men than that of any one X^f his contemporaries. At all events, "the family and the lodger took* to each other instinctively. Robespierre was essentially a man of pure habit, and there is not a trace of any amatory advance on his part to any one of these girls except the one whom it was reported he intended one day to marry. He was like I — A Brother and a Friend,— and one of the girls at least found in him the best, surest, tenderest of counsellors when she became a love-stricken maid anddid not know when the path of her true ; love would begin to ran smooth. It all began in this way. Among the people who had come to live with Robespierre was his sister Charlotte, a masculine and somewhat unsympathetic spinster of some 30 years and over. One day Charlotte thought she would take Elisabeth — or Babet, as her name was tenderly abbreviated by her family — to hear a debate at the mighty Convention whose proceedings then made the whole world wonder. And when they had taken their place in the gallery up comes a young member — then 28 years of age — to salute the sister of hia leader, and there and then he asked who was the charming young companion who sat by her side;. Babet Duplay was indeed charming. She had just reached her twentieth year ; had cheeks full and fresh, beautiful lips, a beautiful abundance of hair, round which there was on this day - a bright-coloured bit of ribbon ; and her eyes were clear, frank, and tender. The I young deputy who was introduced to her | was Philippe Le Bas — one of the' finest and ; most attractive- figures in the days of the Terror and the ranks of the Revolu- . tionists. I Here we find ourselves confronted by > one of the figures which make it so difficult j to accept the popular version of the un- | mitigated scoundrel ism of Robespierre and Robespierre's friends. — Philippe Le Bas — I was a provincial who had come to Paris >in the hope of pushing his fortunes ; and \ especially of helping his parents — who had la other children — to rear the family. There are letters still extant which drawa charming picture of the man and of his times. In one he announces to his father that he has been obliged to leave the lodgings where he wed to live ; they wer« not clean ; and they did not help him to make that good appearance in the world which was necessary if he were to fiad 1 briefs ; for he had just been called to the f bar. He half apologises for the extravagance of this new enterprise ; it will cost j no less » earn than 180fr — 7gs — a. year. "People who take an interest in me," ac adds apologetically, "declare that it suits me to aT. The furnishing will cost me very little, especially if you are able to comply with the request that I am going fto make to you. Could you send me f what would make up a bed — namely, two I mattresses, two blankets, and three or i four pairs of sheets ; I would also like ! to have three curtains for three windows." And then this letter winds up with affectionate greetings. It is one of those i little glimpses into that tender, affectionate, united, and self-sacrificing family life which is the glory and salvation of France. This was the kind, honest, simple young man who met Babet Duplay that day ; and from that day forward he occupied the first place in her heart and in her maiden dreams. The passion, however, had to be- concealed in her heart ; for days she saw i nothing of Philippe Le Bas, and won- | dered ; and then she heard he was ill ; : and by the wave of anguish which swept her heart she knew that it was love he had inspired. The suspense affected her j health ; she began to grow thin, and all I the household became anxious ; and no ono was more anxious than Robespierre. He ; questioned her : but he could get nothing out of her ; she hid her secret. Then ! she went to the country for change of air ; but when 6he came back she was sadder and paler; she blushed when her "good friend," as she called Robespierre, looked at her fixedly, remarking that such melancholy as hers was not natural in one so young ; probing her wound which she tried to conceal. J And then^ one evening, goin# to th« ; meeting of the Jacobins, she neariv fainted when once again she saw the well-remem-bered face : but hew changed ! Le Bas was pale, thin, ill. He looked steadily *t the trembling and blushing yonng girl ; and then he held to her very strange lanHe knew, he said, that «he was kind, and therefore he felt bold to make to her the request that she should find I him a wife. Then he described what kind lof wife he wanted. She must be gay in 6pirit, fond of pleasure and of dreee, and one also that would never consent to nurse her own children ; that would make ltcr too much of a slave, and would rob her of the amusements which a young woman

ought to have. The startled, shocked girl could scarcely keep from fainting ap the man she had idealised as a Jean Jacques Rousseau hero uttered such/ language ; and then, taking her tenderly by the hand, La Bas avowed* the somewhat trite etratagem; and then he told her he loved- "her, and she made the same confession. ■■ ' • One evening the lover. naked the* band 0 of JJhe girl from.. her mother in -the .Garr dens of the.-. Tuileries ;_ . • that beautiful region still- extant and. slilL beautiful ; but' at that moment standing between- such" , terrible frontiers as the Convention of the' dub of the Jacobins, - the Place de- la. RerJublique, where the guillotine worked ' - daily ! The girl thought little of this as from afar she attempted to divine- the fortune of her lover's request. She wrote an account of the whole scene. £0 years afterwards ; and eren across that -long :guKof time and of separation, and misfortune and death, she could still recall that it was a beautiful evening. - - - I am tempted to pause here for just a moment to emphasise one of the factors we always forget in writing about these past times — -namely.,. . » i — The Atmosphere.— I suppose- that moat of us, when we :e« call the days of the Terror, imagine a; society living in the same emotions as the characters in a very loud melodrama ? to think of them. as eating, sleeping, talking, going through the common day's work in the common way seems unimaginable ; and yet they did. To them the times that* seem so extraordinary to us, were more or kss like ordinary times. Never do- I fiit outside a cafe in Paris drinking a cup of coffee without thinking that men and women sat in just the same way— sipping their coffee and enjoying the fresh air and the sacred peace that follows a good meal — when Marie. Antoinette was closing the • last hour of her a,~~*vy, and when Dan- - ton, with, his dauntless brow, jibed and l jested as he went, to the scaffold. And now realise Ijhat little, picture of a lovelorn maid and an ardent young lover on' that beautiful evening in the Garden of, the Tuileries playing the eternal drama of human love go unconsciously and so naturally with the Convention, the Jacobin Club, and the guillotine close by! The suit of the lover was not immediately successful. Babet — ar Lizzie, as we should call her — spent a sleepless night; and part of the time she tried to catch' the discussion in which her parents were deciding her fate. And who should enter into this, discussion— and pleading her cause warmly — but Robespierre; the terrible man who was busy, as the world thought, with such subjects as the lists of the nobles and political enemies who were to pass from the Revolutionary Tribunal to the guillotine? And then the next morning came the solemn audience in which the young man made his public request to the assembled family for the hand of B&bet. She, meantime, was ironing the household linen anTf" making demure pretence to be thinking only of her humble work. She is summoned ; her father makes her a qtern, address quite after the fashion of the heavy father of the melodrama. Then he drops the sock and buskin, throws her into the arms of her lover ; and Robespierre— ■who 16 present — is the first to offer bis congratulations. The marriage took place on August 26, 1793. And then came just a Kttle over nine months of married blue. Le Bas, a friend and confidant of Robespierre, is> appointed one of the Commissioners sent by the Convention to the Armies, and to the cities where the Reactionaries had to be suppressed, if needs be, by wholesale executions, and as omnipotent Proconsul — master of life and_ death — the" young Le Bas, who was 29, travelled with the younger and even more powerful St. Just, who was 24. And a fine time these terrible Pro-consuls had when they wera out of sight of the cheering crowds and the servile authorities, who acclaimed them when they appeared as saviours of the country. They latyphed ; they joked. St. Just had a beautiful voice, and either he recited extracts from Mbliere or Bang Italian duets with Le Bas; and he made discreet love to Henriette — the sister of Le Bas, who- accompanied them, — whileBabet leant her curly Read oil the shoulder of her lover-husband. Once again ordinary, even commonplace life, insisted on its rights amid Titanic figures and gigantic events ! It lasted, as I have said, for just about nine months. Then Babet began, to perceive that her Philippe was turning melancholy and anxious, that — The Dictatorship of Robespierre — with its daily load of victims being driven to the guillotine, — which, after the strange and incomprehensible hallucinatiofi of politicians, seemed to be everlasting — waa visibly coming to an end ; and when Le Bas returned on the day when Robespierre compelled all Paris to pay worship to the Supreme Being whom he insisted on creating — a God in his own likeness— Le Baa said to his wife, "The country is lost." To him — honest, narrow, loyal soulRobespierre and the country meant the same thing. And 10 days after ' he said this, his chijd was born. Then came the revolt against Robespierre. Babet saw her Philippe leave their modest apartments on the morning of the day we know as the Ninth Thermidor for the Convention, unsuspicious of the coming danger. But that was the day, when Robespierre was arraigned; when, after desperate defence, h« was beaten at last ; and the whole world he had reduced to terror rose up against him. Le Baa could easily have escaped if, like the others, he had been ready to betray the master he h«d served, or even if he could have been induced to hold his tongue. But that was not his nature. He demanded — he insibted — that be should be condemned in the same moment and in the same terms , as the chief he had loved. And the Convention, taking him at his word, indicted him also, and sent him with Robespierre,, to the La Force prison. Word was brought to the wife; with the prompt^ tude ard alertness of the true Parisian, she rushed to the cell, -with, a bed, with

li mattress, and a blanket. But before ■he gets there she finds herself in the midst of a surging crowd ; her ears are almost deafened by the shoute of armed men, by the loud beat of the insurgent drum; and in the midst of it all there is he, -tie brave, the -noble, the belovedone ;-he has jnet; been released from gaol by the crowd ib&t is "still on -the side of Robespierre and determined to fight for, iiim against' 'the Convention. ' The husband breaks through- tbe crowd, speaks to : her and to his sister, who is with her, and, already foreseeing the inevitable end, asks these two beloved ones to go back to their homes. "Nurse him with your own milk," he says to his wife, speaking of their child — -true to the gospel according to Jean Jacques Rousseau* to the end — "inspire hitn with the love of country, tell. him that hi^ father died for his country. Farewell, my Elisabeth, farewell!" They caa -say no -0101*; the crowd surges up Again between them ; he is carried hither, she thither, and never again do they see each other. ' Le Bas » taken to tbe Hotel de Ville to rejoin Robespierre > he joins in the entreaties of the rest t& Robespierre to forget his thin legal pedantries at this supreme hour, and to- place himself at the head of the troops and march on the Convention. Bat Robespierre is pedant and apostie to ibe end. H« refuses, and when L» Bap finally knows that the game is up, be. places a pislol to his heart, and the guillotine and the triumphant Thermidorians are robbed of one victim. —The End of the Storyis in some respects the most interesting and the most instructive, and elucidates the proposition which runs through this article— namely, that neither Robespierre nor those who knew him best nor his times regarded him with the same eyes as we do. Tbe widow of Philippe Le Bas gave the tenderest reverence to the name of her husband', and as tender to those ot bis associates — to £T Just and to Robespierre. Of all the men of the Revolution whom she- had known, she always put Robespierre next to her husband as the gentlest and the best, and she had known Robespierre in the 'narrow intimacy of her father's email flat in the Rue St. Honore. ( She was -thrown into prison ; bet mother was arrested and stranded herself in prison ; her father end her brother, her cousins', her uncles, her two sisters were also imprisoned; but she herself was placed: in a wretched cell that had no window. At night die washed with her own hinds her "baby's limn; she was too poor to find him a new suit of underwear. And she might have escaped this and other humiliations if only she would consent to give up the name of the husband whose memory was already blasted. She refused to be guilty of such an act of treason. Years afterwards she married again, but she had not to change her name, * for it was to the "brother of her husband that she was married. The son of the ' famous " Conventional * also had bis little tfay of gtory. ' "Well -educated, intelligent, ■ studious, charming, be was chosen to be the tutor of an exiled young Frenchman who wanted to be taught the history of his country,' and whose mother was the most anxious of parents. The mother's 'dame was Hortense ; the boy became tbe Louis Napoleon whom we of this generation knew.' To the «nd Iftadame Le Bas was faithful to _ her 1 - memories, her affection, and her opinions.- She never could be sot to admit any crimes in the days of tbe Terror ; any defects in its leaders. The final scene is perhaps the one which best illustrates my theme." "One evening 1 ' young Sardou — already steeped in' the literature of the Revolution — went to a little dance; his dancing days were not over j. his day-s of glory bad not begun 1 . He arrived "late, he could find no partner of his own age, and; there Were still places for two in the quadrille they were about to dance. And this' is what followed: — He sees on a- sofa a lady dressed 'all in black, evidently old, though her figure was still young ; and he takes his courage in both hands and asks her to dane«. "It is nwwnv a long day since I danced," the lady replied, with a smile T . -oune Sardou. insists; the mistress of the house comes, to his assistance. "Oh, you must, you must; it is between you two." ' And tbe lady consented, on the condition that they would tell her tbe figures of the quadrille. After the dance the young collegian asks the name of his partner. "She is," answered Mme. Boismont, "the mother of Philippe Le Bas, of the Institute, and the widow of tbe Conventional." "You mean he who killed himself," cried Sardou,- still fresh from his studies of Th*ei!s% of the Revolution." The 'mistress of the house repeated the exclamation to Mme. Le Bas, who beckoned the young collegian to come and sit beside her. She speaks to him of the Revolution and 'Robespierre, and when sh* saw that he was somewhat cool to her hero she added : "You would certainly have loved him if you had known him ; he was so cood and so affectionate, and especially to the young." So Robespierre appeared to those who. knew hhn best. It is a strange oontradictdon — their judgment and ours.