Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the menuisier's shop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies on their career of glory, and ordained an artificial conduit to carry off the blood that deluged the metropolis of the most martial people in the globe! Such was the man who had resigned a judicial appointment (the early object of his ambition) rather than violate his philanthropical principles by subscribing to the death of a single fellow-creature; such was the virgin enemy to capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, was the man whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whose hatred of the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he died five years earlier, have left him the model for prudent fathers and careful citizens to place before their sons.Such was the man who seemed to have no vice, till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the two which, in ordinary times, lie ever the deepest and most latent in a man's heart,--Cowardice and Envy.To one of these sources is to be traced every murder that master-fiend committed.His cowardice was of a peculiar and strange sort; for it was accompanied with the most unscrupulous and determined WILL,--a will that Napoleon reverenced; a will of iron, and yet nerves of aspen.Mentally, he was a hero,--physically, a dastard.When the veriest shadow of danger threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the danger to the slaughter-house.So there he sat, bolt upright,--his small, lean fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into space, their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears literally moving to and fro, like the ignobler animals', to catch every sound,--a Dionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and every formal hair in its frizzled place.
"Yes, yes," he said in a muttered tone, "I hear them; my good Jacobins are at their post on the stairs.Pity they swear so! Ihave a law against oaths,--the manners of the poor and virtuous people must be reformed.When all is safe, an example or two amongst those good Jacobins would make effect.Faithful fellows, how they love me! Hum!--what an oath was that!--they need not swear so loud,--upon the very staircase, too! It detracts from my reputation.Ha! steps!"The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up a volume; he seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow, a bludgeon in his hand, a girdle adorned with pistols round his waist, opened the door, and announced two visitors.The one was a young man, said to resemble Robespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expression of countenance.He entered first, and, looking over the volume in Robespierre's hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture, exclaimed,--"What! Rousseau's Heloise? A love-tale!""Dear Payan, it is not the love,--it is the philosophy that charms me.What noble sentiments!--what ardour of virtue! If Jean Jacques had but lived to see this day!"While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in his orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeled into the room in a chair.This man was also in what, to most, is the prime of life,--namely, about thirty-eight; but he was literally dead in the lower limbs: crippled, paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the time soon came to tell him,--a Hercules in Crime! But the sweetest of human smiles dwelt upon his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised his features ("Figure d'ange," says one of his contemporaries, in describing Couthon.The address, drawn up most probably by Payan (Thermidor 9), after the arrest of Robespierre, thus mentions his crippled colleague: "Couthon, ce citoyen vertueux, QUI N'A QUE LE COEURET LA TETE DE VIVANS, mais qui les a brulants de patriotisme"(Couthon, that virtuous citizen, who has but the head and the heart of the living, yet possesses these all on flame with patriotism.)); an inexpressible aspect of kindness, and the resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole into the hearts of those who for the first time beheld him.With the most caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the admirer of Jean Jacques.
