MODERN TIMES
Robespierre in those few months of his ascendancy,
months which soon began to seem like years. For the
rest, Mirabeau, Danton — they did but pass across the
stage. They never had all the power to themselves.
Moreover they were discredited by the scandal of their
private lives, especially their monetary transactions,
which were notorious. It is impossible, in these days,
to hold a brief for Danton; and the India Company
scandal, which involved his tools and his friends in
irretrievable ruin, remains a lasting blot upon his
memory. No scandal of any sort ever tarnished the per-
sonal fame of Robespierre. That is why the others, who
were themselves corrupt, called him the Incorruptible.
When the Revolution began, Maximilien de Robes-
pierre was thirty-one years of age, having been born at
Arras on the 6th May, 1758. He attended college there,
attracting the favourable notice of the Bishop, and then
proceeded to complete his studies at the Lycee Louis le
Grand in Paris. In 1781, having obtained his degree and
qualified as a barrister, he returned to Arras, where he
lived a quiet, orderly life, inditing amatory verses, and
occasionally appearing on behalf of a client at the Law
Courts. Apparently no existence could have been more
unexciting. Finding himself, in no long time, a member
of the Arras Academy, he became familiar with what
was a usual subject of discussion at provincial academies
in those days, namely the philosophy of revolution.
In 1789, he was elected to the cConstituante3 and, like
everybody else, he was a royalist.
However, Rousseau's teaching had a profound effect
on him, and little by little, he came to grasp the trend
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