SANSCULLOTISED LITEKATURI': TN FRANCE. 365 



rule, were not keen on revolutionizing- syntax, and who were not 

 afraid of being- taken for aristocrats on account of their language 

 being academic. 



Through an unforeseen antithesis — the history of the Revolu- 

 tion is replete with antitheses — the parliamentary style is diame- 

 trically opposed to the language of the people. On the platform 

 no triviality, no outrageous coarseness, no blasphemy. The 

 orators are like so many '* heavy fathers " expressing themselves 

 in accordance with the all but exaggerated rules of rhetoric. 

 Several among them being members of the Bar. they make it a 

 point of honour to carry the palm of victory in those tournaments 

 Avith the tongiie that are held daily at meetings and clubs. Robes- 

 pierre is the typical representative of these academic orators, 

 whose wearying emphasis stands out in cruel contrast with the 

 violence of their politics. 



At the festivities of prairial (20th May-i8th June), 

 rliis jx)ntiff of the .Supreme Being Vvas simply perfect as 

 a jx)ntiff ; for such he was throughout his life. His 

 speeches are homilies, his colleagues the catechumens, 

 whom it was his task to convert. Virtue is his hobby. 

 He does not deliver his harangues ex lUiproviso. He carefully 

 ■writes them down in the quiet seclusion of the study ; he never 

 takes liberties with the classical division of his addresses, and the 

 se(|uence of exordium, proposition, proof, refutation, and perora- 

 tion is conscientiously adhered to. To state it plainly, he has not 

 a single one of the qualities of the political orator, w-hose fiery 

 and spontaneous eloquence electrifies the mob. and who gets his 

 inspiration on the spur of the circumstances. He was a senti- 

 mentalist, who had strayed into the whirl of the revolutionary 

 cyclone. \\'ithout this cyclone Robespierre would in all prob- 

 ability have become a scrupulous barrister, a devotee of literature, 

 whose mystic propensities would have found ample scope and 

 gratifications in J. J. Rousseau's writings. As a youth he was a 

 member of the Rosati Club at Arras, a club of young men united 

 by the bonds of friendship and l:)y a taste for poetry, roses and 

 wine, who went in for philosophy — that is to say, who were 

 following the movements set on foot by Rousseau and Voltaire. 

 The majority of them sacrificed on the altar of the Muses, and 

 so did Robespierre. Quite a posy of nice little pieces of poetry 

 did he write, redolent with rustic country odours as Jean Jacques 

 loved them, or scented with the perfume of old-fashioned 

 amorous courtshi]). What a distance there lies between these 

 innocent times and the da}' when he gave his absolution to Pro- 

 vidence for the perennial rule of crime and tyranny on earth, or 

 when he professed to make France the ornament of the universe \ 

 Of a liervous and bilious temperament, this Utopian visionary, 

 who firmly believed in the actual jn-icticability of Rousseau's 

 " Contrat Social," and yet swerved so far away from his master, 

 was probably more than anybody else smitten with the circum- 

 ambient neurosis. This originally trusty and straightforward 

 mind — his addresses in the Legislative Assembly are available to 



