Nothing Ventured Epub Download

Great writers have already written the records of this memorable epoch,and others still to follow will write them also. It would be aninjustice to compare us with them. They have produced, or will produce,the history of an age. We have produced nothing more than a "study" of agroup of men and a few months of the Revolution.

He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugee and establishedin Provence, but of Italian origin: the progenitors were Tuscan. Thefamily was one of those whom Florence had cast from her bosom in thestormy excesses of her liberty, and for which Dante reproaches hiscountry in such bitter strains for her exiles and persecutions. Theblood of Machiavel and the earthquake genius of the Italian republicswere characteristics of all the individuals of this race. Theproportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices,passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic orperverse, the men sublime or depraved, and their language even is asemphatic and lofty as their aspirations. There is in their most familiarcorrespondence the colour and tone of the heroic tongues of Italy.

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Mirabeau's education was as rough and rude as the hand of his father,who was styled the friend of man, but[Pg 4] whose restless spirit andselfish vanity rendered him the persecutor of his wife and the tyrant ofall his family. The only virtue he was taught was honour, for by thatname in those days they dignified that ceremonious demeanour which wastoo frequently but the show of probity and the elegance of vice.Entering the army at an early age, he acquired nothing of militaryhabits except a love of licentiousness and play. The hand of his fatherwas constantly extended not to aid him in rising, but to depress himstill lower under the consequences of his errors: his youth was passedin the prisons of the state; his passions, becoming envenomed bysolitude, and his intellect being rendered more acute by contact withthe irons of his dungeon, where his mind lost that modesty which rarelysurvives the infamy of precocious punishments.

The king, who held Mirabeau's eloquence in pay, the queen, with whom hehad nocturnal conferences, regretted him, perhaps, as the last means ofsafety: yet still he inspired them with more terror than confidence; andthe humiliation of a crowned head demanding succour from a subject musthave felt comforted at the removal of that destroying power which itselffell before the throne did. The court was avenged by death for theaffronts which it had undergone. He was to the nobility merely anapostate from his order. The climax of its shame must have been to beone day raised by[Pg 8] him who had abased it. The National Assembly hadgrown weary of his superiority; the Duc d'Orleans felt that a word fromthis man would unfold and crush his premature aspirations; M. de LaFayette, the hero of the bourgeoisie, must have been in dread of theorator of the people. Between the dictator of the city and the dictatorof the tribune there must have been a secret jealousy. Mirabeau, who hadnever assailed M. de La Fayette in his discourses, had often inconversation allowed words to escape with respect to his rival whichprint themselves as they fall on a man. Mirabeau the less, and then M.de La Fayette appeared the greater, and it was the same with all theorators of the Assembly. There was no longer any rival, but there weremany envious. His eloquence, though popular in its style, was that of apatrician. His democracy was delivered from a lofty position, andcomprised none of that covetousness and hate which excite the vilestpassions of the human heart, and which see in the good done for thepeople nothing but an insult to the nobility. His popular sentimentswere in some sort but the liberality of his genius. The vastexpansiveness of his mighty soul had no resemblance with the paltryimpulses of demagogues. In acquiring rights for the people he seemed asthough he bestowed them. He was a volunteer of democracy. He recalled byhis part, and his bearing, to those democrats behind him, that from thetime of the Gracchi to his own, the tribunes who most served the peoplehad sprung from the ranks of the patricians. His talent, unequalled forphilosophy of thought, for depth of reflection, and loftiness ofexpression, was another kind of aristocracy, which could never bepardoned him. Nature placed him in the foremost rank; and death onlycreated a space around him for secondary minds. They all endeavoured toacquire his position, and all endeavoured in vain. The tears they shedupon his coffin were hypocritical. The people only wept in allsincerity, because the people were too strong to be jealous, and they,far from reproaching Mirabeau with his birth, loved in him that nobilityas though it were a spoil they had carried off from the aristocracy.Moreover, the nation, disturbed at seeing its institutions crumblingaway one by one, and dreading a total destruction, felt instinctivelythat the genius of a great man was the last stronghold left[Pg 9] to them.This genius quenched, it saw only darkness and precipices before themonarchy. The Jacobins alone rejoiced loudly, for it was only he whocould outweigh them.

Voltaire had the genius of criticism, that power of raillery whichwithers all it overthrows. He had made human nature laugh at itself, hadfelled it low in order to raise it, had laid bare before it all errors,prejudices, iniquities, and crimes of ignorance; he had urged it torebellion against consecrated ideas, not by the ideal but by sheercontempt. Destiny gave him eighty years of existence, that he mightslowly decompose the decayed age; he had the time to combat againsttime, and when he fell he was the conqueror. His disciples filledcourts, academies, and saloons; those of Rousseau grew splenetic andvisionary amongst the lower orders of society. The one had been thefortunate and elegant advocate of the aristocracy, the other was thesecret consoler and beloved avenger of the democracy. His book was thebook of all oppressed and tender souls. Unhappy and[Pg 16] devotee himself, hehad placed God by the side of the people; his doctrines sanctified themind, whilst they led the heart to rebellion. There was vengeance in hisvery accent, but there was piety also. Voltaire's followers would haveoverturned altars, those of Rousseau would have raised them. The onecould have done without virtues, and made arrangements with thrones; theother had absolute need of a God, and could only have founded republics.

Mirabeau was great enough not to fear, and just enough not to despisehim. Barnave, a young barrister of Dauphin, had made his dbut withmuch effect in the struggles between the parliament and the throne whichhad agitated his province, and displayed on small theatres the eloquenceof men of the bar. Sent at thirty years of age to the States General,with Mounier his patron and master, he had soon quitted Mounier and themonarchical party, and made himself conspicuous amongst the democraticdivision. A word of sinister import which escaped not from his heart,but from his lips, weighed on his conscience with remorse. "Is then theblood that flows so pure?" he exclaimed at the first murder of theRevolution. This phrase had branded him on the brow with the mark of aringleader of faction. Barnave was not this, or only as much so as wasnecessary for the success of his discourses; nothing in him was extremebut the orator: the man was by no means so, neither was he at all cruel.Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, hisintellect was mediocre, his mind honest, his will variable, his heart inthe right place. His talent, which they affected to compare withMirabeau's, was nothing more than a power of skilfully rivetting publicattention. His habit of pleading gave him, with its power of extemporespeaking, an apparent superiority which vanished before reflection,Mirabeau's enemies had created him a pedestal on their hatred, andmagnified his importance to make the comparison closer. When reduced tohis actual stature, it was easy to recognise the distance that existedbetween the man of the nation, and the man of the bar.

There are abysses that we dare not sound, and characters we desire notto fathom, for fear of finding in them too great darkness, too muchhorror; but history, which has the unflinching eye of time, must not bechilled by these terrors, she must understand whilst she undertakes torecount. Maximilien Robespierre was born at Arras, of a poor family,honest and respectable; his father, who died in Germany, was of Englishorigin. This may explain the shade of Puritanism in his character. Thebishop of Arras had defrayed the cost of his education. Young Maximilienhad distinguished himself on leaving college by a studious life, andaustere manners. Literature and the bar shared his time. The philosophyof Jean Jacques Rousseau had made a profound impression on hisunderstanding; the philosophy, falling upon an active imagination, hadnot remained a dead letter; it had become in him a leading principle, afaith, a fanaticism. In the strong mind of a sectarian, all convictionbecomes a thing apart. Robespierre was the Luther of politics: and inobscurity he brooded over the confused thoughts of a renovation of thesocial world, and the religious world, as a dream which unavailinglybeset his youth, when the Revolution came to offer him what destinyalways offers to those who watch her progress, opportunity. He seized onit. He was named deputy of the third estate in the States General. Aloneperhaps among all these men who opened at Versailles the first scene ofthis vast drama, he foresaw the termination; like the soul, whose seatin the human frame philosophers have[Pg 31] not discovered, the thought of anentire people sometimes concentrates itself in the individual, the leastknown in the great mass. We should not despise any, for the finger ofDestiny marks in the soul and not upon the brow. Robespierre hadnothing: neither birth, nor genius nor exterior which should point himout to men's notice. There was nothing conspicuous about him; hislimited talent had only shone at the bar or in provincial academies; afew verbal harangues filled with a tame and almost rustic philosophy,some bits of cold and affected poetry, had vainly displayed his name inthe insignificance of the literary productions of the day: he was morethan unknown, he was mediocre and contemned. His features presentednothing which could attract attention, when gazing round in a largeassembly: there was no sign in visible characters of this power whichwas all within; he was the last word of the Revolution, but no one couldread him. e24fc04721