s; if I, with so much refinement and delicacy, am simple and
honest,--reflect, and admire me!"

On the walls of this chamber hung many portraits, most of them
represented but one face; on the formal pedestals were grouped many
busts, most of them sculptured but one head. In that small chamber
Egotism sat supreme, and made the Arts its looking-glasses. Erect in
a chair, before a large table spread with letters, sat the original of
bust and canvas, the owner of the apartment. He was alone, yet he sat
erect, formal, stiff, precise, as if in his very home he was not at
ease. His dress was in harmony with his posture and his chamber; it
affected a neatness of its own,--foreign both to the sumptuous fashions
of the deposed nobles, and the filthy ruggedness of the sans-culottes.
Frizzled and coiffe, not a hair was out of order, not a speck lodged
on the sleek surface of the blue coat, not a wrinkle crumpled the snowy
vest, with its under-relief of delicate pink. At the first glance, you
might have seen in that face nothing but the ill-favoured features of a
sickly countenance; at a second glance, you would have perceived that
it had a power, a character of its own. The forehead, though low and
compressed, was not without that appearance of thought and intelligence
which, it may be observed, that breadth between the eyebrows almost
invariably gives; the lips were firm and tightly drawn together, yet
ever and anon they trembled, and writhed restlessly. The eyes, sullen
and gloomy, were yet piercing, and full of a concentrated vigour that
did not seem supported by the thin, feeble frame, or the green lividness
of the hues, which told of anxiety and disease.

Such was Maximilien Robespierre; such the chamber over the menuisier's
shop, whence issued the edicts that launched armies on their career of
glory, and ordained an artificial conduit to carry off the blood that
deluged the metropolis of the most martial people in the globe! Such was
the man who had resigned a judicial appointment (the early object of
his ambition) rather than violate his philanthropical principles by
subscribing to the death of a single fellow-creature; such was the
virgin enemy to capital punishments; and such, Butcher-Dictator now, was
the man whose pure and rigid manners, whose incorruptible honesty, whose
hatred of the excesses that tempt to love and wine, would, had he died
five years earlier, have left him the model for prudent fathers and
careful cit