Danton, whom the Revolution had found an obscure barrister at the Châtelet, had increased with it in influence. He had already that celebrity which the multitude easily assigns to him whom it sees every where, and always listens to. He was one of those men who seem born of the stir of revolutions, and which float on its surface until it swallows them up. All in him was like the mass—athletic, rude, coarse. He pleased them because he resembled them. His eloquence was like the loud clamour of the mob. His brief and decisive phrases had the martial curtness of command. His irresistible gestures gave impulse to his plebeian auditories. Ambition was his sole line of politics. Devoid of honour, principles, or morality, he only loved democracy because it was exciting. It was his element, and he plunged into it. He sought there not so much command as that voluptuous sensuality which man finds in the rapid movement which bears him away with it. He was intoxicated with the revolutionary vertigo as a man becomes drunken with wine; yet he bore his intoxication well. He had that superiority of calmness in the confusion he created, which enabled him to control it: preserving sangfroid in his excitement and his temper, even in a moment of passion, he jested with the clubs in their stormiest moods. A burst of laughter interrupted bitterest imprecations; and he amused the people even whilst he impelled them to the uttermost pitch of fury. Satisfied with his two-fold ascendency, he did not care to respect it himself, and neither spoke to it of principles nor of virtue, but solely of force. Himself, he adored force, and force only. His sole genius was contempt for honesty; and he esteemed himself above all the world, because he had trampled under foot all scruples. Every thing was to him a means. He was a statesman of materialism, playing the popular game, with no end but the terrible game itself, with no stake but his life, and with no responsibility beyond nonentity. Such a man must be profoundly indifferent either to despotism or to liberty. His contempt of the people must incline him rather to the side of tyranny. When we can detect nothing divine in men, the better part to play is to make use of them. We can only serve well that which we respect. He was only with the people because he was of the people, and thus the people ought to triumph. He would have betrayed it, as he served it, unscrupulously. The court well knew the tariff of his conscience. He threatened it in order to make it desirous of buying him; he only opened his mouth in order to have it stuffed with gold. His most revolutionary movements were but the marked prices at which he was purchaseable. His hand was in every intrigue, and his honesty was not checked by any offer of corruption. He was bought daily, and next morning was again for sale. Mirabeau, La Fayette, Montmorin, M. de Laporte, the intendant of the civil list, the Duc d'Orleans, the king himself, all knew his price. Money had flowed with him from all sources, even the most impure, without remaining with him. Any other individual would have felt shame before men and parties who had the secret of his dishonour; but he only was not ashamed, and looked them in the face without a blush. His was the quietude of vice.[3] He was the focus of all those men who seek in events nothing but fortune and impunity. But others had only the baseness of crime—Danton's vices partook of the heroic—his intellect was all but genius. He had upon him the bright flash of circumstances, but it was as sinister as his face. Immorality, which was the infirmity of his mind, was in his eyes the essence of his ambition; he cultivated it in himself as the element of future greatness. He pitied any body who respected any thing. Such a man had of necessity a vast ascendency over the bad passions of the multitude. He kept them in continual agitation, and always boiling on the surface ready to flow into any torrent, even if it were of blood.
XXII.
Brissot de Warville was another of these popular candidates for the representation. As this individual was the root of the Girondist party, the first apostle and first martyr of the republic, we ought to know him. Brissot was the son of a pastrycook at Chartres, and had received his education in that city with Pétion, his fellow countryman. An adventurer in literature, he had begun by assuming the name of Warville, which concealed his own. It is a plebeian nobility not to blush at one's father's name. Brissot had not done so. He began by furtively appropriating one of the titles of that aristocracy of races against which he was about to raise equality. Like Rousseau in every thing but his genius, he sought his fortune hither and thither, and descended even lower than he into misery and intrigue, before he acquired celebrity. Dispositions become weakened and stained by such a struggle with the difficulties of life in the dregs of great corrupted cities. Rousseau had paraded his indigence and his reveries in the bosom of nature; and as its consideration calms and purifies everything he quitted it a philosopher. Brissot had dragged his misery and vanity into the heart of Paris and of London, and into those haunts of infamy in which adventurers and pamphleteers drag on a filthy existence: he left them an intriguer. Yet in the very midst of these vices which had rendered his honesty dubious, and name bespotted, he nurtured in the depths of his soul three virtues capable of again elevating him—an unshaken love for a young girl, whom he married in spite of his family, a love of occupation, and a courage against the difficulties of life, which he had afterwards to display in the face of death. His philosophy was identical with Rousseau's. He believed in God. He had faith in liberty, truth, and virtue. He had in his soul that unqualified devotion towards the human species which is the charity of philosophers. He detested society, for in it there was no place awarded to him; but what he hated with unmitigated hate was the state of society; its prejudices—its falsehoods. He would have recast it, less for himself than for the benefit of mankind. He would have consented to be crushed beneath its ruins, provided those ruins were to give place to his ideal plan of the government of reason. Brissot was one of those mercenary scribes who write for those who pay best. He had written on all subjects, for every minister; especially Turgot. Criminal laws, political economy, diplomacy, literature, philosophy, even libels,—his pen was at the hire of the first comer. Seeking the support of celebrated and influential men, he had adulated all from Voltaire and Franklin down to Marat. Known to Madame de Genlis, he had, through her, some acquaintance with the Duc d'Orleans. Sent to London by the minister on one of those missions which are nameless, he there became connected with the editor of the Courrier de l'Europe, a French journal, printed in London, and the boldness of whose style was offensive at the court of the Tuileries. He engaged himself to Swinton, the proprietor of this newspaper, and edited it in a manner favorable to the views of Vergennes. He knew at Swinton's several writers, amongst others one Morande. These libellers, outcasts of society, frequently then become the refuse of the pen, and live at the same time on the disgraces of vice and in the pay of spies. Their collision infected Brissot. He was or appeared to be sometimes their accomplice. Hideous blotches thus stain his life, and were cruelly revived by his enemies, when the time came in which he was compelled to appeal to public esteem.
Returning to France at the first symptoms of the Revolution, he watched its successive phases, with the ambition of an impatient man, and with the indecision of one not knowing what part to take. He was frequently wrong. He compromised himself by his devotion, too early displayed, towards certain men who had seemed to him for a moment to be all powerful, especially towards La Fayette. Editor of the Patriote Français, he had occasionally put forth revolutionary feelers, and flattered the future by going even faster than the factions themselves. He had even been disowned by Robespierre. "Whilst I content myself," said Robespierre, referring to him, "with defending the principles of liberty, without opening any other question, what are you doing, Brissot and Condorcet? Known until now by your great moderation and your connection with La Fayette, for a long time followers of the aristocratic club of '89, you suddenly blazon forth the word Republic. You issue a journal entitled the Republican! Then minds become in a ferment. The mere word Republic throws division amongst patriots, and affords to our enemies a pretext which they seek for announcing that there exists in France a party which conspires against the monarchy and the constitution. Under this title we are persecuted, and peaceable citizens are sacrificed on the altars of their country! At this name we are transformed into factions, and the Revolution is made to recede, perhaps, half a century. It was at the same moment that Brissot came to the Jacobins, where he had never before appeared, to propose a republic of which the simplest rules of prudence had forbidden us to speak in the National Assembly. By what fatality did Brissot find himself there? I would fain discover no craft in his conduct; I would prefer detecting only imprudence and folly. But now that his connection with La Fayette and Narbonne are no longer a mystery—now that he no longer dissimulates his schemes of dangerous innovations, let him clearly understand that the nation will at once and effectually break through all the plots framed during so many years by pitiful intriguers."
So spake Robespierre, jealous by anticipation, and yet just, on Brissot's presenting himself as a candidate. The Revolution rejected him, the Counter-revolution repudiated him no less. Brissot's old allies in London, especially Morande, returned to Paris under cover of the troublous times, revealed to the Parisians in the Argus, and in placards, the secret intrigues and the disgraceful literary career of their former associate. They quoted actual letters, in which Brissot had lied unblushingly as to his name, the condition of his family, and his father's fortune, in order to acquire Swinton's confidence, to gain credit, and make dupes in England. The proofs were damning. A considerable sum had been extorted from a man named Desforges, under pretence of erecting an institution in London, and this sum had been expended by Brissot on himself. This was but a trifle: Brissot, on quitting England, had left in the hands of this Desforges twenty-four letters, which but too plainly established his participation in the infamous trade of libels carried on by his allies. It was proved to demonstration that Brissot had connived at the sending into France, and the propagation of, odious pamphlets by Morande. The journals hostile to his election seized on these scandalous facts, and held them up to public obloquy. He was, besides, accused of having extracted from the funds of the district of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, of which he was president, a sum for his own purse, long forgotten. His defence was laboured and obscure; yet it was held by the club of the Rue de la Michodière sufficient proof of his innocence and integrity. Some journals, solely occupied with the political bearing of his life, took up his defence, and made loud complaints against his calumny. Manuel, his friend, who edited a vile journal, wrote thus, to console him:—"These ordures of calumny, spread abroad at the moment of scrutiny, always end by leaving a dirty stain on those who scatter them. But it is allowing a triumph to the enemies of the people, to repulse thus a man who fearlessly attacks them. They give me votes, in spite of my drivellings, and my love of the bottle. Leave 'Père Duchesne'[4] alone, and let us nominate Brissot; he is a better man than I am."
Marat, in his Ami du Peuple, wrote thus ambiguously of Brissot:—"Brissot," says the Friend of the People, "was never, in my eyes, a thorough-going patriot. Either from ambition or baseness, he has up to this time betrayed the duties of a good citizen. Why has he been so tardy in leaving a system of hypocrisy? Poor Brissot, thou art the victim of a court valet, of a base hypocrite!—why lend thy paw to La Fayette? Why, thou must expect to experience the fate of all men of indecision. Thou hast displeased every body; thou canst never make thy way. If thou hast one atom of proper feeling left, hasten, and scratch out thy name from the list of candidates for the approaching general election."
Thus appeared on the scene for the first time, in the midst of the hootings of both parties, this man, who attempted in vain to escape from the general contempt accumulated on his name from the faults of his youth, in order to enter on the gravity of his political career—a mingled character, half intrigue, half virtue. Brissot, destined to serve as the centre of a rallying point to the party of the Gironde, had, by anticipation in his character, all there was in after days, of destiny in his party, of intrigue and patriotism, of faction and martyrdom. The other marked candidates in Paris, were, Pastoret, a man of the South, prudent and skilful as a Southron steering ably betwixt parties, giving sufficient guarantee to the Revolution to be accepted by it, enough devotion to the court to retain its secret confidence; borne hither and thither by the alternating favours of the two opinions, like a man who seeks fortune for his talent in the Revolution, but never looking for it beyond the limits of the just and honourable. Lacepede, Cérutti, Héraut de Séchelles, and Gouvion, La Fayette's aide-de-camp. The elections of the department occupied but little attention. The National Assembly had exhausted the country of its characters and its talents; the ostracism it had exercised had imposed on France but secondary ability. There was but little enthusiasm for untried men: the public eyes were only fixed on the names about to disappear. A country cannot contain a twofold renown: that of France was departing with the members of the dissolved Assembly—another France was about to rise.