rname of the family had the prefix of
nobility, they belonged to the middle class. When this decorative prefix
became dangerous, Maximilian Derobespierre dropped it. His great rival,
Danton, was less prudent or less fortunate, and one of the charges made
against him was that he had styled himself Monsieur D'Anton.

Robespierre's youth was embittered by sharp misfortune. His mother died
when he was only seven years old, and his father had so little courage
under the blow that he threw up his practice, deserted his children, and
died in purposeless wanderings through Germany. The burden that the weak
and selfish throw down, must be taken up by the brave. Friendly
kinsfolk charged themselves with the maintenance of the four orphans.
Maximilian was sent to the school of the town, whence he proceeded with
a sizarship to the college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He was an apt and
studious pupil, but austere, and disposed to that sombre cast of spirits
which is common enough where a lad of some sensibility and much
self-esteem finds himself stamped with a badge of social inferiority.
Robespierre's worshippers love to dwell on his fondness for birds: with
the universal passion of mankind for legends of the saints, they tell
how the untimely death of a favourite pigeon afflicted him with anguish
so poignant, that, even sixty long years after, it made his sister's
heart ache to look back upon the pain of that tragic moment. Always a
sentimentalist, Robespierre was from boyhood a devout enthusiast for the
great high priest of the sentimental tribe. Rousseau was then passing
the last squalid days of his life among the meadows and woods at
Ermenonville. Robespierre, who could not have been more than twenty at
the time, for Rousseau died in the summer of 1778, is said to have gone
on a reverential pilgrimage in search of an oracle from the lonely sage,
as Boswell and as Gibbon and a hundred others had gone before him.
Rousseau was wont to use his real adorers as ill as he used his
imaginary enemies. Robespierre may well have shared the discouragement
of the enthusiastic father who informed Rousseau that he was about to
bring up his son on the principles of _Emilius_. 'Then so much the
worse,' cried the perverse philosopher, 'both for you and your son.' If
he had been endowed with second sight, he would have thought at least as
rude a presage due to this last and most ill-starred of a whole
generation of neophytes.

In 1781 Robespierre