naturally
curling hair of the laborer, the muscles of the man of toil, the
complexion of a fisherman; with the large nose, the shrewd, half-mocking
lips that scoff at fate, the neck and shoulders of the strong man who
cuts his wood to cook his dinner while the doctrinaires of his opinions
talk.

Such, at forty years of age on the breaking out of the Revolution,
was this man, strong as iron, pure as gold. Advocate of the people,
he believed in a republic through the very roll of that name, more
formidable in sound perhaps than in reality. He believed in the republic
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the brotherhood of man, in the exchange of
noble sentiments, in the proclamation of virtue, in the choice of
merit without intrigue,--in short, in all that the narrow limits of one
arrondissement like Sparta made possible, and which the vast proportions
of an empire make chimerical. He signed his beliefs with his blood,--his
only son went to war; he did more, he signed them with the prosperity of
his life,--last sacrifice of self. Nephew and sole heir of the curate of
Blangy, the then all-powerful tribune might have enforced his rights and
recovered the property left by the priest to his pretty servant-girl,
Arsene; but he respected his uncle's wishes and accepted poverty, which
came upon him as rapidly as the fall of his cherished republic came upon
France.

Never a farthing's worth, never so much as the branch of a tree
belonging to another passed into the hands of this notable republican,
who would have made the republic acceptable to the world if he and such
as he could have guided it. He refused to buy the national domains; he
denied the right of the Republic to confiscate property. In reply to all
demands of the committee of public safety he asserted that the virtue of
citizens would do for their sacred country what low political intriguers
did for money. This patriot of antiquity publicly reproved Gaubertin's
father for his secret treachery, his underhand bargaining, his
malversations. He reprimanded the virtuous Mouchon, that representative
of the people whose virtue was nothing more nor less than
incapacity,--as it is with so many other legislators who, gorged with
the greatest political resources that any nation ever gave, armed with
the whole force of a people, are still unable to bring forth from them
the grandeur which Richelieu wrung for France out of the weakness of
a king. Consequently, citizen Niseron became a l