montagnarde1793 | That Book About Le Bas (Again!) (Reply)

Not another one! WTF, seriously.

...In other, less pathetically stupid news:

Paris, this 15 March 1790.[1]

Nothing new, my dear father. I’m still waiting for the summary judgment. It is not enough for the judges of this country to be unjust and ignorant; they are, moreover, desperately slow.

I already see some increase in my means of existence here. A few useful acquaintances that I have made aside, I have, as a lawyer, enough work to fulfill the moments of leisure that the case with which I am principally occupied leaves me with.

As my lodgings with M. Dreu were no more than just proper for receiving, and because on does not inspire confidence generally here if one does not present a prosperous enough exterior, I am renting, for one hundred eighty francs a year, an apartment with two rooms on the first floor, in the Rue Guénégaud. It is very pretty, very decent, and the persons who have taken an interest in me have found that it suits me marvelously. I am to occupy it at the end of this month. It will cost me very little to furnish it, especially if you can defer to the following request.

It would be a question of sending me the makings of a bed, which is to say two mattresses, some blankets, and three or four pairs of curtains.

I will also need curtains for three casements.

May I count, my dear father, on your ordinary goodness in this circumstance, and will you take it badly that I am seeking to install myself in a country that will ever offer more resources to a young man without fortune than any other, and where I will certainly find greater facility to serve my parents?

I know that in choosing this I am removing myself from you; it costs my heart to do so. But I would not have chosen it if it would have taken the possibility of seeing you again away from me. We will be able to see each other many times. There will still be vacations.

M. Lhéritier is still of the best disposition. If he has not shown me his goodwill effectively, it is because the moment has not arrived. But I have learned that it was a question, among other things, of tutelage: he wanted to know if I was of the age of majority and a lawyer. M. de Berghes also applauds my plan to stay in Paris. You see therefore that this is not a young man’s idea.

Adieu, my dear father; a thousand assurances of attachment to my brothers and sisters; accord some answer to your son’s tender sentiments.

LE BAS.

But his father, already very aged, asks him to come second him; Le Bas does not hesitate: he gives up a career that promised to be brilliant.

Already his character is being neatly drawn: ambition – legitimate ambition – had touched him at an age when young men consume their resources and their health in pleasure, but a stronger sentiment deterred him twice-over from the path he would have liked to follow: he gives up honors like pleasure through affection for his family. Filial piety, what is called altruism today, sweeps away all considerations of amour-propre. It would be thus for him until the end of his days.

On the morning of 24 March 1790, he had written:

This 24 March 1790.[2]

I have, my dear father, communicated your accounts to M. Lhéritier, in the country, nine leagues from Paris. I will arrive in a moment and I have only enough time to write you these few words to break a longish silence. I will send you accounts and papers with the next courier.

There is much trouble and movement here. Yesterday and the day before yesterday the people hanged ten thieves.

LE BAS.

Having received a letter from his father that afternoon, he takes up his pen again, and, without hesitation, writes:

Paris, this 24 March, 1790.[3]

… However advantageous it may seem to me to set up in Paris, whatever distaste you may suppose me to have for the provinces; I will never hesitate to sacrifice advantages, to surmount distaste, whenever your satisfaction depends on it. I see that I am upsetting you in wishing to establish myself here; on the other hand, your new pains bring you to desire that all who truly love you be near you. Well then! My father, tell me frankly that you desire it and I will be ready to leave; nothing will restrain me; I can even assure you that I will willingly live in a country that, I admit, has in itself no attraction for me, but which will be embellished, in my eyes, when I know that my stay there is necessary to your happiness. You will not doubt it, in your son a faithful friend, an inseparable companion who will share your work, your pains, your pleasures. In a word, whatever may be the discourse I give place to in acting thus, I am not much worried about it: my principal ambition is to contribute to making you happy. I can easily abandon any project that does not accord with that one. Duty, and above all, my heart, tells me that I could not do otherwise: no, my father, I would not know how to live with a conscience that reproached me for having been the cause of your pains or for not at least having tried to diminish them. Such are, such have always been, my dispositions. I did not believe that you could have forgotten them. But, my father, let the knowledge that I give you anew of them reconcile me with you, if you may have been angry with me.

Adieu, my dear father, a thousand friendly sentiments to my brothers and sisters.

LE BAS.

Let us note, in passing, that among these brothers and sisters, whom he is about to return to, in the month of May 1790, is Henriette, who will inspire a very lively sentiment in Saint-Just.

Lamartine imagined, relative to this, a curious romance: the young girl, who returned, in the beginning, the sentiment that Saint-Just felt for her, then hesitated to give him her hand; Saint-Just, attributing this disaffection to Le Bas and Robespierre, cooled toward his colleagues and abstained, for this reason, from going to several sessions of the Committee of Public Safety, “an absence,” Lamartine concluded, “that weakened Robespierre’s party and caused his fall and his death. A frustrated heart’s inclination had some effect in the catastrophe that brought down Robespierre and the Republic.”[4]

* * *

The first act establishing Le Bas’ adhesion to democratic principles is his designation, as a deputy of his department, for the federation of 14 July 1790.[5]

After having lent his father the aid he expected of him for several months, he sets up near his family, in Saint-Pol, to exercise the profession of a man of law there.

It is from this city that he writes, on 15 October 1790:[6]

I went today, my dear father, to five or six houses here to find wood. I found some at one place, but they wanted to sell it to me for 30 francs a cord, and that price seemed excessive. I do not really know when I will be able to procure myself any at a reasonable price. I believe that it would be best to ask Augustin to bring me a coach. If this course seems preferable to you, I pray you not to delay in taking it.

I have received the main part of the bed, and I hope that tomorrow everything will be put in order in my lodgings. I have also made some visits, among others with M. the mayor.

I wish you good health and a good evening until I have the pleasure of seeing you.

LE BAS.

As a contemporary document, we have conserved only a rapid note from his father, dated from Frévent, the following 27 November:[7]

I am sending you, my dear son, a sum of 42 francs, out of which you will reimburse yourself for the 18 francs spent for your sister Roode. The surplus will serve you for your little necessities.

Charles has not written me; he must have set off, nonetheless.

Bonjour, we are all doing well.

LE BAS.

It is around this time that he is named administrator of the department, while continuing to live in Saint-Pol. But his new functions oblige him not to be sedentary.[8] Besides, in Arras he is charged with a case that has great repercussions in Artois:

An old maréchal-des-logis in the 8th cavalry regiment, by the name of Berceau, had just been remanded in the martial court of Arras; he was falsely accused of insubordination by an officer, who, as a gentleman, had since believed himself obliged to emigrate. The accusation of indiscipline was grave at a time when the patrie was threatened by fourteen foreign armies; yet Berceau was acquitted; his lawyer, whose words must have been eloquent and persuasive, was driven back to Saint-Pol in triumph. But the superior officers of the 8^th regiment believed they had to avenge the honor of the epaulette by overwhelming the old soldier with disgust. The young lawyer, not yet esteeming his mission to be over, addressed the minister Servan himself an energetic reclamation, which was fully successful.[9] Le Bas and Berceau were to meet again on the battlefield a few years later.

Called to the directory of the department to be part of the central administration (December 1791), Le Bas refused this appointment at first: his youthful ambition had disappeared. But he ended by accepting, upon the renewed insistence of his friends and family; and he showed, in his new functions, the ideas of tolerance and the conciliatory qualities that were so precious to his colleagues, later, when he was delegated to the armies.[10]

He now lived most often in Arras, but he had kept his real domicile in Saint-Pol, as it appears on the following document:[11]

Department of Pas-de-Calais, district of Saint-Pol.

SIMPLE LICENSE

Year 1792.

This day, ninth June 1792, is presented before us, administrators of the directory of the district of Saint-Pol, the sieur Le Bas, domiciled inhabitant of the community of Saint-Pol, staying there, in the Rue des Procureurs, parish of Saint-Pol, with a rental of a value of thirty-six livres.

Which has justified us from his declaration, conforming to article XII of the law of 17 March 1791, at the office of the municipality, following the certificate under the n°3 given by him to the secretariat of our district, on the back of which is the quittance of the tax collector of this community, of the sum of 3 livres 12 sols, forming the import of the licensing rights, of which the total price was settled at the aforementioned sum by the aforementioned municipality of Saint-Pol.

And has called for us to deliver him a simple license, to have the right to exercise, during the course of the year 1792, whatever profession pleases him, only excepting those mentioned in article XIV of the law of 17 March 1791.

In virtue of which certificate and quittance, we have delivered him the present license, by means of which it permissible for the aforementioned sieur Le Bas to exercise, during the course of the year 1792, whatever profession pleases him, only excepting those mentioned in article XIV of the law of 17 March 1791.

Delivered by us, administrators of the directory of the district of Saint-Pol.

Drafted at Saint-Pol, this 9 June 1792, Year IV of Liberty.

(Four signatures follow).

Nevertheless, most of his letters are dated from Arras: they deserve to be retained.

I hate this post-length limit. D:< Because of it--not me--the footnotes will be posted seperately.