recount. Maximilien Robespierre was born at Arras, of a poor family,
honest and respectable; his father, who died in Germany, was of English
origin. This may explain the shade of Puritanism in his character. The
bishop of Arras had defrayed the cost of his education. Young Maximilien
had distinguished himself on leaving college by a studious life, and
austere manners. Literature and the bar shared his time. The philosophy
of Jean Jacques Rousseau had made a profound impression on his
understanding; the philosophy, falling upon an active imagination, had
not remained a dead letter; it had become in him a leading principle, a
faith, a fanaticism. In the strong mind of a sectarian, all conviction
becomes a thing apart. Robespierre was the Luther of politics: and in
obscurity he brooded over the confused thoughts of a renovation of the
social world, and the religious world, as a dream which unavailingly
beset his youth, when the Revolution came to offer him what destiny
always offers to those who watch her progress, opportunity. He seized on
it. He was named deputy of the third estate in the States General. Alone
perhaps among all these men who opened at Versailles the first scene of
this vast drama, he foresaw the termination; like the soul, whose seat
in the human frame philosophers have not discovered, the thought of an
entire people sometimes concentrates itself in the individual, the least
known in the great mass. We should not despise any, for the finger of
Destiny marks in the soul and not upon the brow. Robespierre had
nothing: neither birth, nor genius nor exterior which should point him
out to men's notice. There was nothing conspicuous about him; his
limited talent had only shone at the bar or in provincial academies; a
few verbal harangues filled with a tame and almost rustic philosophy,
some bits of cold and affected poetry, had vainly displayed his name in
the insignificance of the literary productions of the day: he was more
than unknown, he was mediocre and contemned. His features presented
nothing which could attract attention, when gazing round in a large