He married Mademoiselle Charpentier, daughter of a lemonade-seller on the Quai de l’Ecole.  This young lady controlled him by her affection, and insensibly reformed him from the disorders of his youth to more regular domestic habits.  She extinguished the violence of his passions, but without being able to quench that which survived all others—­ambition of a great destiny.

Danton lived in a small apartment in the Cour de Commerce, near his father-in-law, in rigid economy, receiving but a very few friends, who admired his talent and attached themselves to his fortunes.  The most constant were Camille Desmoulins, Petion, and Brune.  From these meetings went forth signals of extensive sedition.  The secret subsidies of the court came there to tempt the cupidity of the head of the young revolutionists.  He did not reject them, but used them sometimes to excite and sometimes to control the agitations of opinion.

He had by this marriage two sons, whom his death left orphans in their cradle, and who succeeded to his small inheritance at Arcis-sur-Aube.  These two sons of Danton, alarmed at the effects of their name, retired to their family domain, and cultivated it with their own hands, and in an honest and industrious obscurity limited to themselves all their father’s notoriety.  Like the son of Cromwell, they preferred the shade and silence the more, as their name had a too sinister reputation, and too wide an extension in the world.  They remained unmarried, that the name might die with them.

At this moment Danton, whose ambitious instincts revealed the close return to fortune of the Girondists, sought to attach himself to this rising party, and give them the weight of his worth and importance.  Madame Roland flattered him, but with fear and repugnance, as a woman would pat a lion.

XII.

Whilst the Girondists were exciting the anger of the people against the king, hostilities were beginning in Belgium, in consequence of reverses, which were attributed to treasons of the court:  these were produced by three causes; the hesitation of the generals, who did not understand how to impart to their troops that ardour which impels the masses, and bears down resistance; the disorganisation of the armies, which emigration had deprived of their ancient officers, and who had no confidence in the new; and finally, the want of discipline, that element of revolutions, which clubs and Jacobinism had spread amongst the troops.  An army that discusses is like a hand which would think.

La Fayette, instead of advancing at once on Namur according to Dumouriez’s plan, lost a good deal of precious time in assembling and organising at Givet, and the camp of Ransenne.  Instead of giving the other generals in line with him, the example and the signal of invasion and victory, by at once occupying Namur, he moved about the country with 10,000 men, leaving the remainder of his forces encamped in France, and fell back at the first news of the checks sustained by the detachments of Biron and Theobald Dillon.  These checks, though partial and slight, were disgraceful for our troops.  It was the astonishment of an army unaccustomed to war, and fearful of entering the lists, but which, like a soldier at his first campaign, would soon grow used to battles.