decision of character and showed him marked respect.

Couthon, a man of great ability, and St. Just, were devoted friends and loyal to the last. His brother, who was fondly attached to him, went willingly with him to the scaffold, and his sister Charlotte, a woman of lovely character, believed absolutely in his sincerity and integrity of purpose and risked her life at the time of his arrest by attempting to minister to his wants.

David, the painter, had a high regard for him, and in addressing his sons said: "You will be told that Robespierre was a villain; he will be painted to you in the most hideous colors; do not believe a word of it. The day will come when history will render him the fullest justice."

Napoleon believed that his intentions were honorable and patriotic. "His plan," declared Cambacères, "after having overturned the furious factions, was to return to a system of order and moderation."

"It is possible," says Belloc, "that he may take, centuries hence, the appearance of majesty. We are accustomed to clothe such figures with a solemn drapery and to lend them at great distances of time a certain terrible grandeur."

Already he is beginning to be better understood; distance is giving the necessary perspective; time is removing the intolerance and prejudice of the past; and he is at least receiving credit for the virtues he did possess. However, as La

martine says, "This man was and must ever remain shadowy and undefined."

There is no question but that, at the time of his death, he was looked upon as a sanguinary monster, bent on extermination and almost wholly to blame for the then recent terrible carnage. The reports, studiously put into circulation by his enemies to cover up their own crimes, gave him this reputation. Passenger! lament not his fate; for if he were living, thou wouldst be dead," was suggested as an appropriate epitaph.

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Josephine Beauharnais, in her Memoirs, relates the following interesting incident, which shows with what delight, in some quarters, his death was hailed.

One day while standing at the window of the prison, with Madame d' Aiguillon, and looking out into the yard below, Josephine saw a woman endeavoring to attract her attention by making signs. The woman constantly held up her gown (robe) and Josephine made a motion with her lips as if pronouncing the word "Robe." A nodding of the head made answer that this was right, and then the woman lifted up a stone and put it in her apron. Josephine said "pierre," and the woman fairly danced for joy when she saw that her signs were understood, and at once imitated the motion of cutting off the head. This singular pantomime was interpreted by the ladies to mean that Robespierre was no more. Just at that moment there was a noise in the corridor, and the hoarse voice of the gaoler was heard scolding his dog and cursing him for a brute of

a Robespierre, and from this the ladies took fresh hope and courage, and felt that they "had nothing to fear and that France was saved."

Of course, wherever the emigrants were assembled, their demonstrations of joy were beyond all bounds. Madame de Genlis, at one time a mistress of the Duke of Orleans, gives an amusing account of how the news was brought to her. She was living in a boarding-house, filled with emigrants, in Dresden. At midnight, just as the clock was striking the hour, a knock at the door aroused her from her revery. Calling out to the unexpected visitor to come in, she was the next moment struggling in the arms of a bald-headed old gentleman, a fellow lodger, who insisted upon kissing her because the news had reached town that Robespierre was dead. When satisfied of the truth of the report, she "conscientiously returned his embrace."

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Barère who, it must not be forgotten, was a member of the Great Committee in the height of its power and during the period of carnage after the death of Danton, wrote in his Memoirs: One must speak of Robespierre when one wishes to represent France devoured by the most sanguinary and disgusting despotism; one must condescend to pronounce that execrable name, when one wishes to paint the genius of crime and calumny, demoralizing the souls, digging tombs at the side of the prepared scaffolds, destroying all social ideas, overthrowing property, oppressing the representation of the people, and making war on talent and genius like the Visigoths." Barère

was one of the men who, while filling the death carts with innocent victims during the “Reign of Terror," circulated the reports that threw the blame upon Robespierre at a time when the latter, although a member of the Committee, was purposely absenting himself from its sessions. It was this same Barère whose ingenuity invented the story that Robespierre intended to marry the captive daughter of Louis XVI and then proclaim himself king.

Mignet, in his history of the French Revolution, declares that Robespierre "had the qualifications for tyranny; a soul not great, it is true, but not common; the advantage of one sole passion; the appearance of patriotism; a deserved reputation for incorruptibility; an austere life; and no aversion to the effusion of blood."

Michelet speaks conservatively but cannot altogether make up his mind as to the real character of this "honest man who adheres to principles; a man of talent and austere morality."

Lamartine asserts that "his death was the date and not the cause of the cessation of terror. Deaths would have ceased by his triumph as they Idid by his death."

"He opened the veins of the social body to cure the disease; but he allowed life to flow out, pure or impure, with indifference, without casting himself between the victims and the executioners."

"He did not desire evil and yet accepted it." For eighteen months, he allowed his name to serve as the standard of the scaffold, and the

justification of death. He hoped subsequently to redeem that which is never redeemed-present crime through the purity, the holiness of future institutions.

"He was intoxicated with the perspective of public felicity, while France was palpitating on the block."

"He besmeared with blood the purest doctrines of democracy. His principles were sterile and fatal like his proscriptions, and he died exclaiming with the despondency of Brutus the Republic perishes with me.' He was in effect, at that moment, the soul of the Republic and it vanished with his last sigh."

"He was," says Thiers, "of the worst species of men, one of the most odious beings that ever ruled over men, and the very vilest, if he had not possessed a strong conviction and an acknowledged integrity."

M. d'Hericault describes him as a fiend in human form, while Louis Blanc holds him in high esteem, and M. Hamel, his most enthusiastic biographer, becomes really fulsome in his laudation.

Lord Brougham, in his interesting sketch of Robespierre, describing him from the English point of view, says: "In fine, that he was beyond most men that ever lived, hateful, selfish, unprincipled, cruel, unscrupulous is undeniable.

All the revolutionary chiefs were his superiors in the one great quality of courage. his want of boldness, his abject poverty of spirit made him as despicable as he was