After hearing this energetic warning, Eleanor Duplay left her lover’s room, firmly believing that she had greatly sinned in speaking as she had done, but conscious, at any rate, of having intended no evil, either to him or to the unfortunate country respecting which he expressed so constant a solicitude.

As soon as she was gone, he again took up the papers which he had written, and re-read them with great care.  In the letter to the two Commissioners he underscored the passages which most forcibly urged them to energy in their work of destruction, and added a word here and there which showed more clearly his intention that mercy should be shown to none.  He then turned to his letter to his brother.  In that he said that Eleanor’s conduct had been a source of great comfort to him, and that he blamed himself for still feeling any reserve with her.  He now erased the passage, and wrote in its stead, “even with Eleanor Duplay I have some reserve, and I feel that I cannot throw it off with safety!” and having done this, he, laboriously copied, for the second time, the long letter which he had written.

When he had finished his task, he left his own chamber, and went down into a room below, in which the family were in the habit of assembling in the evening, and meeting such of Robespierre’s friends as he wished to have admitted.  The cabinet-maker, and his wife and daughters, together with his son and nephew, who assisted him in his workshop, were always there; and few evenings passed without the attendance of some of his more intimate friends.  They were, at first, merely in the habit of returning with him from the Jacobins’ club, but after a while their private meetings became so necessary to them, that they assembled at Duplay’s on those nights also on which the Jacobins did not meet.

When Robespierre entered the humble salon, Lebas, St. Just, and Couthon were there; three men who were constant to him to the last, and died with him when he died.  As far as we can judge of their characters, they were none of them naturally bad men.  They were not men prone to lust or plunder; they betrayed no friends; they sought in their political views no private ends; they even frequently used the power with which they were invested to save the lives of multitudes for whose blood the infuriate mob were eager.  Lebas and St. Just were constant to the girls they loved, and Couthon, who was an object of pity as a cripple, was happy in the affection of a young wife whom he adored; and yet these were the men who assisted Robespierre in organizing the Reign of Terror, and with him share the infamy of the deeds which were then committed.  They were all of them young when they died.  They were men of education, and a certain elevation, of spirit.  Men who were able to sacrifice the pleasures of youth to the hard work of high political duties.  Blood could not have been, was not, acceptable to them; yet under how great a load of infamy do their names now lie buried!