t of equality. As it is, the rich will
always prefer their own fortune to that of the State, whilst the poor
will never love--nor can love--a condition of laws that leaves them in
misery."

Robespierre eyed the young man in some surprise. His delivery was
impassioned, and although in what he said there was perhaps nothing that
was fresh to the lawyer of Arras, yet the manner in which he said it was
impressive to a degree.

"But Duhamel," he cried to the schoolmaster, "you did not tell me this
young patriot was an orator."

"Nor am I, Monsieur," smiled La Boulaye. "I am but the mouthpiece of the
great Rousseau. I have so assimilated his thoughts that they come from
me as spontaneously as if they were my own, and often I go so far as to
delude myself into believing that they are."

No better recommendation than this could he have had to the attention
of Robespierre, who was himself much in the same case, imbued with
and inspired by those doctrines, so ideal in theory, but, alas! so
difficult, so impossible in practice. For fully an hour they sat and
talked, and each improved in his liking of the other, until at last,
bethinking him of the flight of time, Robespierre announced that he must
start.

"You will take him to Paris with you, Maximilien?" quoth the old
pedagogue.

"Ma foi, yes; and if with such gifts as Nature appears to have given
him, and such cultivation of them as, through the teachings of Rousseau,
he has effected, I do not make something of him, why, then, I am
unworthy of the confidence my good friends of Arras repose in me."

They made their adieux, and the schoolmaster, opening his door, peered
out. The street was deserted save for de Robespierre's berline and his
impatient postillion. Between them Duhamel and Maximilien assisted Caron
to the door of the carriage. The moving subjected him to an excruciating
agony, but he caught his nether lip in his teeth, and never allowed them
to suspect it. As they raised him into the berline, however, he toppled
forward, fainting. Duhamel hastened indoors for a cordial, and brought
also some pillows with which to promote the young man's comfort on the
journey that was before him--or, rather, to lessen the discomfort which
the jolting was likely to occasion him.

Caron recovered before they started, and with tears in his eyes he
thanked old Duhamel and voiced a hope that they might meet again ere
long.

Then Robespierre jumped nimbly into the berline. The d