This contempt, which had followed Maximilian to college, pursued him with greater violence now that he had attained a seat in the National Assembly.
He was poor and they knew it. They ridiculed his poverty; he thought it an honor. Having nothing, receiving nothing, but his salary as a member of the Assembly, a third of which went to his sister, he still lived. When the Assembly put on mourning for the death of Franklin, Robespierre, too poor to purchase a suit of black, borrowed a coat for four francs, which, being too long for him, excited, throughout the time of mourning, the irrepressible mirth of the Assembly. The only consolation left him among all this ridicule was, that no one doubted his honesty.
“Had I not confidence,” said he, in one of his speeches, “I should be one of the most wretched men in the world.”
Yet, notwithstanding this, the man was not popular. Some few, indeed, through a species of instinct, saw that he was capable of great things, and among these were Duplay, his wife, and his two daughters.
All these details were given me during supper with the persistence of conviction. It was, therefore, with the liveliest satisfaction that I hailed M. Duplay’s offer to take me to the Jacobins’ Club, and looked forward with curiosity to see him whom they called honest, and afterwards stamped incorruptible.
CHAPTER XV.
I GO TO THE JACOBINS’ CLUB.
At nine o’clock, we left the house, and walked up the Rue St. Honoré towards the Palais Royal.
A current of people pointed the way, stopping at the little door of the Jacobin convent, which exists to this day.
I knew not that this was the place where the aristocratic and literary assembly held their meetings until told so by Duplay.