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montagnarde1793) wrote2009-07-16 03:55 pm
Once again, it's time for... That Book About Le Bas!
Four letters from Le Bas to Élisabeth Duplay have yet been conserved: they are addressed successively from Cassel, Arras, and Hazebrouck.
Here they are:
Cassel, 9 August.[1]
Now it will soon be eight days that I am far from you, my Élisabeth. You have surely received the letters I have written you; and I, have you forgotten me? Every day, I hope to see a letter from you; every day until now my expectation has been deceived. Not to be with you, not to receive any news of you, is a situation which I cannot bear. I am overwhelmed with work. I concede that commissaries who were true patriots were needed in this country. We have had two generals, Omoran [sic] and Richardot, arrested. We are sending officers before the revolutionary tribunal, and we do not cease to take the measures of prudence and severity that the circumstances demand every day. But a deputy as firm as I, seconded by Duquesnoy, who has a talent for such a mission that I had not suspected, would have perfectly fulfilled the aim proposed by Robespierre; and I, in rendering all the services of which I am capable in Paris, I would enjoy the happiness of being with you, my dear… We would be united now. Tell Robespierre that my health cannot lend itself long to the rough trade I practice here; tell him that several of my colleagues are as fit and more as I to acquit themselves of the duties that I am fulfilling here.
Two of my brothers arrived today; it is a small consolation. My father must write me very soon, and I am persuaded that I will take him with me to Paris. Therefore write me, my dear Élisabeth, every day; you promised me. Could you bear to acquit yourself of that promise? Ah! If it were possible! But, no, you have not ceased to love me, as I have not ceased, as I will never cease to be your tender and faithful friend.
LE BAS.
A thousand regards to your house.
Arras, 13 August 1793, Year II of the Republic.[2]
In Cassel I was in a mortal disquiet for eight days, my dear Élisabeth. Every day, I waited and waited in vain for your news; boredom, sadness devoured me. Unforeseen business, the desire to know the state of our armies by Cambrai, have brought me to Arras today with Duquesnoy. I have been given two packages there; they contained letters from my father, one from your sister, my good friend Victoire, and two letters from my Élisabeth. Judge my joy, my elation! I read them, I reread them, I have just read them again, those two letters. Oh! What good they have done my poor heart! How I bless the day, the happy day when I had the sweetness of learning that your soul, so sensitive, so tender, shared the sentiments which you inspired in me, my amiable friend! Why must it be that at the moment when I was going to unite my destiny to yours, we should have seen ourselves so cruelly separated? It is impossible for me to recall the moment that put off that which had seemed so close, after which I sighed, without sorrow. You complain of the laconism of the letter I wrote you from Cambrai; I was barely able to find a moment to write you a few lines, and I would not have finished if I had undertaken to express to you all that I was feeling. You must have since received two other letters dated from Cassel; I enjoined you to write me in that city. I am going to return there tomorrow and usually stay there until the fortunate day when I will return to you. When will that day come? I feel that the presence of two truly patriotic deputies is necessary in the places I am staying, but I am far removed from thinking that it would be difficult to give Duquesnoy a colleague to replace me. It suffices to appoint a man with a firm character like Hentz for him. Moreover the principal measures have been taken by means of the arrest of Omoran and Richardot, of several royalist officers, of a rather large quantity of suspect persons and of the arraignment of two captains before the Revolutionary Tribunal. The generals Bartel and Ernouf no longer being countered by perfidious generals and finding a support in two well-intentioned deputies, can serve the Republic very usefully. I must not hide from you besides that my heath is suffering a bit from the extremely fatiguing and hectic life I lead, and that I have begun on my convalescence. I needed some rest, and I do not imagine that one could hold it against me to remember it now that the reasons that had determined me to forget it no longer exist. I have had the satisfaction of meeting my father here; he sympathized with my sufferings, this good father. Without knowing you, and on my telling, he has conceived for you a friendship that will surely not weaken when he meets you. He absolutely cannot come to Paris, and you must have seen the obstacles opposing my brothers’ coming. But that will not prevent, will not delay our union, since my father, who cannot be witness to it, invites me to conclude it, and envisions as a day of celebration that when he will be able to embrace you as his son’s wife.
How many things would I not have to tell you, my dear Élisabeth! But I have not been able to write you all day; and it is one in the morning; I am overwhelmed with fatigue. Victoire will pardon me if I do not write to her separately. She does not love an ingrate; I am also very attached to her. As to the rest of the family, I regard it as mine. Your father and mother are for me forever objects of respect and affection. Kiss them for me, dear Élisabeth, and make it so I may soon see you again. My idea, you say, does not leave you. Well then! On my side it is the same. I cannot stop thinking about you.
Good evening, my dear friend, I am going to sleep to dream more of you in my slumber.
LE BAS.
P.-S. – What you tell me of your health is far from reassuring me. Take the greatest care of that health which is so precious to me. I thank you for attentiveness in having the letters delivered to their address.
Hazebrouck, 16 August.[3]
I profit, my dear Élisabeth, from a moment of leisure to discuss a little with you. I account on arriving in Cassel this evening, and on being fortunate enough to find a letter from you there. A letter from you!... it is without a doubt a great consolation, but it is not you; nothing can replace you, and I feel at every instant how much I miss you. You spoke to me of the garden; you asked me if I remembered it. Could I forget it, my dear Élisabeth? Oh! No. All the places I could speak freely with you, express you affection for you and hear you yourself say that you loved me, my imagination does not cease to revisit, to rest itself there. When our carriage drives us, and my colleague, tired, either ceases to speak or falls asleep, I, I think of you; if I sleep too I still think of you. Every other idea, when public business no longer occupies me, is unwelcome. Duquesnoy has become dearer to me, ever since he asked me about you and provided me with the occasion to depict my love to him. My dear Élisabeth, O you whom I needed to abandon at the moment when I believed I would unite myself to you forever, you whom I needed to leave to undertake so hard and sad a journey, when will I see you again? Now that my presence is just about no longer so necessary, will Couthon not have enough regard for his young colleague, will Robespierre not consider that I have done enough, to seek to abridge the term of my sacrifice? Certainly, of all those I have made to the patrie, none has cost me so much as that which deprived me of the happiness of being yours as soon as I desired it. One thing above all augments my impatience to rejoin you. I fear that you neglect your health too much. My dear Élisabeth, take care of your health, I beg you; may I soon be able to embrace you in good health. If I am not recalled eight days from now at the latest, it is certain that I will find the means to go to Paris, and when I am there, they will indeed need to determine a replacement for me. To each his turn. I will see Ernouf again today, I hope. Since my arrival in Cassel, I have not seen him much, because he needed to accompany the general Barthel to Cambrai, from which place he only returned a few days ago. He would yet have spoken to me of you; he knows you, and he knows how agreeable such a subject is to me. Continue to take care, my dear Élisabeth, of the arrangement of our house. What joy when we will be there! I wrote yesterday in haste to Robespierre. I could tell him but part of what I wanted him to know. I lacked the time; it’s what happens to me often. It seems that my prediction about the Committee of Public Safety is being accomplished. It angers me, but one would yet be long right to presume ill of most of the men in power. I end in regret, my tender friend. Kiss your father and mother for me. Kiss Victoire and the rest of the family too. Do not forget me to the citoyenne Chalabre, to Calandini, to Robespierre, whom I would hate, if I could hate so good a patriot. I embrace you with all my heart.
LE BAS.
Cassel, 19 August.[4]
My dear Élisabeth, I have received several letters from you. The sentiment they made me feel was mixed with sorrow and pleasure. They have redoubled my impatience to fly back to you. Since I have not been recalled, in concert with Duquesnoy I am going to give myself an order to go to Paris where I count on arriving at the end of the week. Have everything prepared for our marriage. Perhaps after a short stay I will need to depart again. But at least we will have arranged ourselves such that we will no longer be removed from each other. I have only the time to write these few words. A thousand embraces to all your dear family and to our common friends. Everything to you, my dear and tender friend.
LE BAS.
* * *
Two days later, 21 August, the Convention “recalled Le Bas back to it and replaced him with Hentz.”[5]
A few days later he returned to Paris and married Élisabeth Duplay (26 August 1793).
The marriage certificate reads that the marriage was celebrated at the Commune “in the presence of Jacques-Louis David,[6] 43 years, deputy, residing in the Louvre; Jacques-René Hébert, substitute-procurer of the Commune, Rue Neuve-de-l’Égalité. Witnesses of the spouses: Maximilien-Isidore-Marie de Robespierre, 34 years, deputy, Rue Saint-Honoré, Section des Piques; J.-Pierre Vaugeois, 61, cabinetmaker, uncle of the bride.” This document is signed: Le Bas, Élisabeth Duplay, Hébert, David, Robespierre, Vaugeois.
* * *
A few days after this union (14 September), Le Bas was named a member of the Committee of General Security.
This Committee, which had the redoubtable operation of the law of suspects and the direction of the police, was then thus composed: Moyse Bayle, Élie Lacoste, la Vicomterie, Dubarran, Jagot, Amar, Vadier, Vouland, David, Le Bas, Louis (of the Bas-Rhin).
According to Senar, who was admitted to the Committee of General Security as a secretary-writer, this Committee was divided into three parts: that of the dispatchers (Vadier, Vouland, Amar, Jagot, Louis); that of the listeners (David, Le Bas); and that of the counterweights (Moyse Bayle, la Vicomterie, Élise Lacoste, Dubarran).
The first of these three parties was unreservedly devoted to the genius of the Terror; those who compose it were (according to this same Senar) brutal, cruel, or cowards and hypocrites; they dominated the third party, a party of weak men; such that – said Louis Blanc – in his efforts to make a policy equally exempt from pusillanimity and violence prevail, Robespierre found that he had against him the entire Committee of General Security with the exception of two members, the painter David and Le Bas. Moreover, Le Bas[7] was the only levelheaded one; for David, of a volcanic nature, willingly let himself be taken to extremes. The war continued thus until 9 Thermidor, a voiceless war and full of hypocrisy, but so much more dangerous. Robespierre could not mistake it; he felt that the Committee of General Security was working ardently to overthrow him, and he tried to avert the peril by opposing his enemies’ power with a “Bureau of general police”; but when he had recourse to that measure, it was too late.[8]
[1] National Archives, A. B., XIX, 179 (gift of Le Bas).
[2] National Archives, A. B., XIX, 179 (gift of Le Bas).
[3] National Archives, A. B., XIX, 179 (gift of Le Bas).
[4] Collection Le Bas.
[5] Excerpt from the Minutes of the Convention, XIX, p. 136.
[6] The famous painter.
[7] Among the decisions of the Committee of General Security ordering coercive measures, I have found very few bearing Le Bas’s signature. (See notably National Archives., F74435.)
[8] Louis Blanc: History of the Revolution, IV, page 376.