The entry was as difficult as that of a sanctuary. By special favor, as chief carpenter to the Duke of Orleans, Duplay had a card of admission.
At the door, Cornelie, Estelle, and the two apprentices left us, plunging down a staircase veritably built in the thickness of the wall.
I asked M. Duplay where they were going. He told me that there was, under the church, a smaller hall—a sort of crypt—where the workmen and their wives held a club—the workmen attending in the day, their wives at night. They there explained to each other the constitution.
Two ushers kept guard on each side of the door.
One, small and fat, with a bass voice, was the famous singer, Lais, whom the habitués of the Opera applauded up to 1825.
The other, a handsome young man with wavy hair, undisfigured by powder, and a generally aristocratic air, was a pupil of Madame de Genlis, the son of the Duke of Orleans, the Duke of Chartres, the conqueror of Jemappes, and the future King of France.
By his side was his young brother, the Duke of Montpensier, for whom, with great trouble, he had obtained admittance, notwithstanding his extreme youth.
On entering, at sight of the orator, who occupied the tribune, I cried out, “Ah! there is M. Robespierre.”
In fact, after the portrait M. Duplay had given me, it was impossible not to recognize him. The impression he produced upon me was profound.
Yes, it was he, although his face had not yet assumed the grim and fantastic appearance that it did later on. There he was, with that primly-brushed olive-colored coat, and that waistcoat of snowy whiteness, with his hair powdered, and thrown back from his brow, the skin of which, in its hideous wrinkles, reminded one of the parchment on a death’s head.