irs, and is known in history as 'the
Younger Robespierre.' The selection of this dwelling seems to have
fallen in with Robespierre's notions of economy; and it suited his
limited patrimony, which consisted of some rents irregularly paid by a
few small farmers of his property in Artois. These ill-paid rents,
with his salary as a representative, are said to have supported three
persons--himself, his brother, and his sister; and so straitened was
he in circumstances, that he had to borrow occasionally from his
landlord. Even with all his pinching, he did not make both ends meet.
We have it on authority, that at his death he was owing L.160; a small
debt to be incurred during a residence of five years in Paris, by a
person who figured as a leader of parties; and the insignificance of
this sum attests his remarkable self-denial.
Lamartine's account of the private life of Robespierre in the house of
the Duplays is exceedingly fascinating, and we should suppose is
founded on well-authorised facts. The house of Duplay, he says, 'was
low, and in a court surrounded by sheds filled with timber and plants,
and had almost a rustic appearance. It consisted of a parlour opening
to the court, and communicating with a sitting-room that looked into a
small garden. From the sitting-room a door led into a small study, in
which was a piano. There was a winding-staircase to the first floor,
where the master of the house lived, and thence to the apartment of
Robespierre.'
Here, long acquaintance, a common table, and association for several
years, 'converted the hospitality of Duplay into an attachment that
became reciprocal. The family of his landlord became a second family
to Robespierre, and while they adopted his opinions, they neither lost
the simplicity of their manners nor neglected their religious
observances. They consisted of a father, mother, a son yet a youth,
and four daughters, the eldest of whom was twenty-five, and the
youngest eighteen. Familiar with the father, filial with the mother,
paternal with the son, tender and almost brotherly with the young
girls, he inspired and felt in this small domestic circle all those
sentiments that only an ardent soul inspires and feels by spreading
abroad its sympathies. Love also attached his heart, where toil,
poverty, and retirement had fixed his life. Eleonore Duplay, the
eldest daughter of his host, inspired Robespierre with a more serious
attachment than her sisters. The feeling, r
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