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montagnarde1793) wrote2008-03-01 05:05 pm
The same entry as the previous, but in translation
Page 52
All the deputies were delighted with this gallant interlude. [Apparently the author thinks there was some kind of orgy involving the members of the Constituent Assembly and the women who came to bring Capet back to
The poor man had known a great embarrassment when a girl came to sit on his knees. Fearing that he would not know how to act, he had contented himself with speaking to her of politics and commenting on the day’s events for her. That evening, a bit aroused all the same, he let her come into his room and lost – among other things – his timidity.
Page 106
While this riot [the Champ de Mars massacre] took place, at the Jacobin Club, Robespierre and his friends discussed. When they learned, around
—There is certainly a price on my head, said Robespierre, whose face was discomposed.
A good cabinetmaker, the citizen Maurice Duplay, who was present at all the Club’s sessions, approached:
—Come to home with me, I live right near here, I will hide you.
Some minutes later, the two men were walking along the Rue Saint-Honoré.
They quickly entered number 366,[1] passed through the vaulting and emerged in a courtyard-garden where a cabinetmaker’s workshop was located.
—Here, you will be undisturbed, Citizen. No one will come to seek you here.
They entered into the dwelling house and Mme Duplay came to welcome them. She was a woman of forty-five years, with les yeux chauds. She was still beautiful and bore a firm chest, well known to all the men of the quarter, with pride.
Recognizing Maximilien, she joined her hands:
—Oh, Citizen Robespierre, what an honor!
The deputy, powdered, precious, elegant, sat and sighed. For the first time since he had left the club of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, a smile appeared on his face.
In two words, the cabinetmaker Duplay put his wife abreast of the day’s events and explained to her that it was feared that General de La Fayette’s police would come to arrest Robespierre, held responsible for the manifestation.
Mme Duplay went to find her children to present them to the orator of whom all of
—I have one more daughter, Citizen, she said, but she is married to M. Auzat, lawyer of Issoire.
Duplay’s porcine face formed a frown. He detested that son-in-law with the retrograde ideas, and called him only “that imbecile Auzat.”
—Now that the citizen Robespierre has entered our house, he said, that royalist will no longer set foot here.
Mme Duplay dazzled by the fine hands, the bright eyes, the elegance of the deputy, did not reply. She had cheerfully deceived her husband with all the men of the Rue Saint-Honoré and even further afield for years, and felt a very lively interest for Maximilien take root in her.
—You will lodge on the first floor, Citizen, she said.
And, by a little staircase, she led him to a comfortable and calm room giving onto the courtyard.
Robespierre installed his papers, a draft of a speech, and a few gazettes on a table, while the cabinetmaker’s wife placed some flowers in a vase.
Several times, she regarded her guest with vicious eyes, while tapping lightly on the bed, but Maximilien feigned not to understand.
A bit later, in the course of dinner, he took some notice of Éléonore’s well filled-out bosom and seemed in a reverie for a moment. Blushing scarlet, the young girl, who had, like her mother, fallen immediately in love with the deputy, felt her knees tremble, and stared at her plate.
At
He was to remain three years with this family.
This common life has made for numerous problems to be posed to historians. Was Robespierre the lover of Mme Duplay? Was he Éléonore’s lover?
According to their political opinions, some reply formally: “Yes.” Others, furiously: “No.” Sardanapalus of the Terror or immaculate angel? Who was Robespierre really therefore?
Let us listen first to the Thermdorians, who, well understood, attack him without restraint.
“In the house of the Duplays, who housed him, Robespierre had a mistress: his host’s daughter, a pretty brunette of twenty years, named Éléonore.
“Each night, this last went to meet her lover and accomplished feats of hedonism with him.
“One evening, she let out such cries of pleasure that Mme Duplay awoke and came to knock on the deputy’s door.
“—Are you in pain?
“—No, I had a nightmare, replied Robespierre, while Eleonore hid behind the bed.
“Mme Duplay entered. She was in nightclothes. Seeing her guest agitated, she thought that she was the cause of his trouble and, forgetting her most sacred duties, she approached him with a mask of desire on her face.
“Robespierre was at first terrified.
“—I will calm you, said Mme Duplay.
“While she climbed into the bed, Éléonore crawled toward the door on all fours and made it back to her room.
“Then in the very place where he had taken the daughter, Robespierre took the mother…”[2]
Barthélemy echoed these prating tales in his work on the Revolution:
“A tyrant thirsting for blood and glory, Robespierre was also a lewd and hypocritical being. In the last period of his life, he lodged with a cabinetmaker of the Rue Saint-Honoré, the citizen Duplay, who was present at every meeting of the Jacobin Club.
“Betraying the laws of hospitality, Robespierre became the lover of Mme Duplay and of Éléonore, the eldest daughter of the cabinetmaker, a pretty virgin of twenty.
“The tyrant sometimes brought his hostess to walk in Choisy, to taste natural love there in a country locale. There, mislaying all modesty, Mme Duplay gave herself to Robespierre on a bed of ferns and in a décor that would have seemed ideal to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[3]
“In the evening, the two lovers returned to
Without sharing the opinion of these involved “historians,” it must be recognized that strange rumors were in the air at the time on the subject of Robespierre. It was claimed that the Incorruptible went, evenings, to drink champagne in the company of Fouquier-Tinville, Chabot, and a few others, in a place of very ill repute in
A Thermidorian pamphleteer would go so far as to claim that Maximilien embroiled Éléonore in these immodest games. Which, well understood, holds up the highest fantasy.
Let us listen to him however:
“Fouquier-Tinville organized orgies where decency and morality were badly mistreated at an inn in
This return to nature, the author tells us, incited the guests, as a matter of course, to no longer respect any of the rules of propriety in use in the civilized world. The men threw themselves on the women, and everything ended to the satisfaction of each, on the rugs or on the table, amid crushed strawberries…
“Chabot and the two Robespierre [brothers] were present at these gallant parties, adds our anonymous pamphleteer. The tyrant came accompanied by a young person named Éléonore, who was the daughter of his landlord, a cabinetmaker in the Rue Saint-Honoré, and who Danton derisively called Cornélie Copeau.”[5]
The defenders of Robespierre’s virtue, as we have said, are just as formal.[6]
But if the accusers give – and with reason – no proof of what they advance, the second have a rather weak argument as their entire means of defense.
They claim that relations between Maximilien and Éléonore were impossible because of the disposition of rooms in the Duplay house. In effect, one needed to cross the parents’ room to go from the young girl’s room to that of Robespierre.
It is necessary never to have been in love to believe that two young people can be stopped by such an obstacle…
“Doubtless,” reply certain of them, “but what we know of Robespierre’s misogyny and chastity is in absolute contradiction with such a situation.”
What misogyny? What chastity?
We have seen Maximilien, in his youth in
Then?
We think that Robespierre was the lover of Éléonore, to whom he was almost engaged. Later, like Simonne Évrard, who took the name of the Widow Marat, the young girl was moreover sometimes called, and without malice, Mme Robespierre.
And Mme Duplay?
There the mystery is complete. There exists however one proof of her love for Maximilien:
On 10 Thermidor, the cabinetmaker and his family were taken to the prison of Sainte-Pélagie. When she learned that Robespierre had been guillotined, Mme Duplay strangled herself in her cell…
Page 222
The scandal was naturally hushed up. But one can find a trace of it at the National Archives in this note dated from 19 Thermidor:
“The gardener de Fauvel, owner of a house situated in Choisy, has declared before Blache, principal agent of the Committee of General Security, that the two Robespierre [brothers], Lebas [Le Bas], Henriot [Hanriot], and his aides-de-camp, Dumas, Fouquier, Didier, Benoit, and Simon, of the Revolutionary Committee of Choisy, the Vaugeois the Duplays, often gathered at his house, in Choisy, and gave themselves over there to scandalous orgies.”[8]
Page 265
This letter [from Mme Duplessis] had no effect on Robespierre. The Incorruptible did not know pity.
Had he too known the sweetness of a foyer, perhaps he would have acted differently. But his liaison with Éléonore Duplay had nothing romantic about it. He asked of this young girl, in love with him, one precise thing which seemed necessary to his equilibrium as a man, and that was all…
He therefore let Lucile depart for the guillotine.
[1] Currently 398.
[2] PAUL DECASSE, Robespierre et la Terreur.
[3] These walks in Choisy really did take place. Elisabeth, Mme Duplay’s second [third] daughter, noted them in her “Journal.”
[4] BARTHÉLEMY, La Révolution et ceux qui l’ont faite.
[5] Le révolutionnaire qui rêvait d’être roi. (There exists a note in the National Archives – that I will publish further along – whose text confirms these novelistic accusations in a troubling fashion…)
[6] Certain historians entrench themselves behind Charlotte Robespierre, Maximilien’s sister, who wrote hin her Memoirs: “Was there room in his heart for such futilities when his heart was filled entirely with love of the patrie?” But it is known that
[7] Pierre Villiers, who shared Maximilien’s small lodging in 1790, wrote on this subject: “Robespierre was of an ardent temperament that he fought at all times. Almost every night, he bathed his pillow in blood. As far as his continence goes, I knew of only one woman, around twenty-six years old, who he treated rather badly and who idolized him. Very often, he had his door refused to her. He gave her a quarter of his deputy’s salary…” Souvenirs d’un déporté.
[8] Archives nationales, série W 1 b, carton 500, pièce 5. (This accusation should be compared with the anonymous pamphlet cited earlier, on page 110.)
no subject
For some reason, I get a kick out of this dude from the 60s knowing exactly how firm Mme. Duplay's breasts were. I mean. Really?
Mme. Duplay/Maxime makes me...ew. :(
Orgy rumors about Maxime amuse the hell out of me. Maxime at an wild orgy. I'd like to see that, if only to watch him break the world record for Person Holding the, "O______________O;;" Face for the Longest Time.
I'd always thought Mme. Duplay was murdered?
no subject
Well, since he seems to know every other small unverifiable detail of the lives of people he never met... Still, he has a definite fixation.
Me too. But that's hardly surprising, considering it's the Thermidorians who came up with the idea.
I think if Maxime ever did go to said wild orgy he would be traumatized for life. XD
Notice that he says that she strangled herself and not that she hanged herself; the latter is feasible, the former... not so much. And her death certificate says she was strangled before she was hanged, so... In other words, it looks like murder from where I'm standing.
Re: Mme. Duplay.
...I don't know why -- though there may be a *hint* in what was just said -- but I want to reproduce that scene in a film/documentary because, somehow, it angers me. >:O
Re: Mme. Duplay.
Voici le texte du procès-verbal que je trouve dans la collection Le Bas (voir également l’annotation au bas de la page 331):
« Section des sans-culottes.
« Du 11 thermidor an II de la République :
« Nous, commissaire de police de la dite section, avons été requis de nous transporter sur les sept heures du matin en la maison d’arrêt de Pélagie, à l’effet de constater et dresser procès-verbal forcé d’une citoyenne détenue en ladite maison, et réquisitoire nous a été fait par le citoyen Dauphinot, concierge de la dite maison, qui a signé son réquisitoire.
« Sur quoi nous, commissaire de police, accompagné du secrétaire greffier, nous nous sommes transporté en ladite maison et en présence du citoyen Ballay, administrateur de police, du citoyen Dufrêne, inspecteur de police, et du citoyen Dauphinot, nous avons entré dans une chambre au deuxième nº1, où nous avons trouvé un cadavre du sexe féminin, en chemise, un mouchoir rouge autour de la tête, le bras gauche appuyé sur la fenêtre, le corps perpendiculaire, les deux pieds tournés en dehors, attaché à un ruban noir, et ledit ruban attaché à un barreau de la fenêtre, et ledit cadavre pendu après. De suite nous avons fait perquisition dans la chambre qu’habitait ledit cadavre, que le citoyen Dauphinot nous a dit être celui de Françoise-Éléonore Veaugeois [Vaugeois] fe Duplay, âgée de cinquante-neuf ans, entrée d’hier dans ladite maison par ordre du Comité de Sûreté générale ; avons trouvé dans une de ses poches un portefeuille rouge, dans lequel il y avait en assignats la somme de 28 livres 10 sols, trois livres neuf sols en pièces d’argent, une pièce de six liards, et une pièce de deux sols en cuivre, un jeton d’argent, douze papiers de différentes espèces, comme lettres, mémoires de dépense, et sa prestation de serment, qui ont été cotés et paraphés par le citoyen Ballay. Puis nous avons fait retirer du doigt une bague montée en or, ayant pour pierre une herborise (sic) entourée de petits rubis, un anneau d’or, deux paires de lunettes, un déshabillé d’indienne, un jupon de taffetas rayé bleu, un jupon blanc, un corset idem, une pelisse noire, une chemise, une paire de poches, trois mouchoirs de toile, un de mousseline, une paire de bas de coton, un bonnet garni de dentelles marqué M. D. et le mouchoir qu’elle avait sur sa tête, une paire de boucles d’oreilles d’or ; les assignats et les bijoux ont été renfermés dans le portefeuille.
« Nous avons requis le citoyen Barrias, chirurgien-major de la section des Sans-culottes, à l’effet d’examiner ledit cadavre et de nous en faire son rapport. Sur quoi, ledit citoyen Barrias a déclaré avoir reconnu qu’ayant trouvé un cadavre attaché à un barreau de la fenêtre, qui comprimait la trachée artère et les deux jugulaires, et ayant examiné la surface du corps, ni coups, ni écorchures, ni piqûres contondantes, il a trouvé les cuisses et les jambes vergetées de sang répandu dans les tissus cellulaires et corps graisseux, estimé que la cause de mort a été déterminée par la compression susdite, que le cadavre pouvait être là depuis environ minuit ou une heure, et a signé.
« Et tous les effets ci-dessus les avons laissé à la garde du citoyen Dauphinot, à la charge par lui de les représenter toutes fois qu’il en sera requis, et les douze papiers mentionnés au présent, le citoyen Ballay s’en est chargé pour les remettre au Comité de Sûreté générale, et avons clos et signé le présent.
« BALLAY, DUFRESNE, DAUPHINOT, HENRIOT, secrétaire-greffier,
BLONDÉ, commissaire de police. »