He was Roland's correspondent at the south, and Mme. Roland had pictured from his regular, precise, and wise letters, a man of forty, with his head bald from much thinking, and his forehead wrinkled with vigils. The reality of her dream was a young man, gay, merry, light, fond of her sex, the type of the rich and brilliant generation flourishing in '92, to be cut down in '93.
It was in this head, esteemed too frivolous by Mme. Roland, that the first thought of the tenth of August was conceived, perhaps.
The storm was in the air, but the clouds were tossing about in all directions for Barbaroux to give them a direction and pile them up over the Tuileries.
When nobody had a settled plan, he wrote for five hundred determined men.
The true ruler of France was the man who could write for such men and be sure of their coming.
Rebecqui chose them himself out of the revolutionists who had fought in the last two years' popular affrays, in Avignon and the other fiery towns; they were used to blood; they did not know what fatigue was by name.
On the appointed day they set out on the two hundred league tramp, as if it were a day's strolling. Why not? They were hardy seamen, rugged peasants, sunburned by the African simoom or the mountain gale, with hands callous from the spade or tough with tar.
Wherever they passed along they were hailed as brigands.
In a halt they received the words and music of Rouget de l'Isle's "Hymn to Liberty," sent as a viaticum by Barbaroux to shorten the road. The lips of the Marseilles men made it change in character, while the words were altered by their new emphasis. The song of brotherhood became one of death and extermination—forever "the Marseillaise."