390 ROBESPIERRE ; 
however, it be true* that, having once loved, his advances were re- 
jected, it is not quite so surprising that the tender feelings of nature 
were not again permitted, by a person so reserved and sullen, to in- 
terfere with his grand objects. 
Holding no opinions in common with his contemporaries, and in 
no wise consulting their tastes or desires, he did not even partici- 
pate in those vices which were calculated to gratify the popular 
taste. The covetous did not find in him an Orleans, nor the ambi- 
tious a Bonaparte: his proceedings thwarted the plans, and con- 
founded the projects of the wicked, and enshrouded the hopes and 
views of the virtuous in midnight darkness. Gold had no power 
over him; so that the people honoured him by the appellation of 
the ‘‘ unpurchaseable”—a title to which his bitterest enemies dared 
not dispute his claim, and to which posterity will attach more im- 
portance than to the high-sounding title of majesty itself, when 
borne by a despotic monarch. He died at Paris, in the same indi- 
gent circumstances in which he had arrived there, the state of the 
national treasury bearing ample testimony to the disinterestedness 
with which he administered its affairs, at the very moment when 
Courtois, trying his skill in the rostrum, painted—the then defunct 
—Robespiérre in the most odious and hateful colours. Every por- 
tion of the moveable property of those who breathed their last on 
the scaffold was found untouched, and in the same state as when 
first confided to Robespierre’s care ; so that it was scarcely necessary 
for the respective claimants minutely to describe the effects them- 
selves, but merely to specify the cover in which they were enve- 
loped, to insure the safe return of the most trifling article. 
He was sober and industrious, and his morals were strict even to 
severity. He was not idolized by the bon vivants, neither regaling 
his adherents, as Danton was wont to do, nor entering with them 
into the mere sensual enjoyments of life. The dwelling, table, and 
dress, of the ruler of France, were of the same humble and unpre- 
tending description which characterized those of the poor lawyer of 
Arras. He lodged and boarded with the family of a cabinet-maker, 
Dupleix—who, we believe, is still living—in the street St. Ho- 
nore, not far from the Church of the Assumption. 
At a time when the higher classes, in their base hypocrisy, were 
engaged in kindling the torch of civil war, through the instrumen- 
tality of a religion in which they themselves placed no credence— 
* Memoires historiques sur la vie de Suard, etc., par Dominique Joseph Ga- 
rat. Paris, 1820. 
