ON SAINT-JUST
467
But that executioner cut short a historical destiny. A number
of contemporaries saw in Saint-Just the coming rival of Robespierre.
What would history have been like
if
the blade had not fallen on
Robespierre, releasing Hoche, and opening the way to Bonaparte?
We can only speculate, in the silence kept by Saint-Just from the
eighth of Thermidor until his execution. Does this silence hide a
break with Robespierre, as Michelet conjectures ("This young Draco
was the one betrayed by all. ..."), and as all the facts brought to–
gether and ordered by Albert Ollivier indicate so strongly? This break
would account for the somnambulistic scorn of Saint-Just, the note
of "Too late" which seems to be tolling in him after the moment at
which his last speech was interrupted. This famous orator, interrupted
by a point of order while occupying the rostrum, does not seem to
have
attempted
to take the floor again, even during the formal ac–
cusation of Robespierre, even during his own accusation; this leader
who alone among the members of the Convention under indictment
was capable of organizing military resistance, spent the hours of his
temporary freedom watching over the corpse of Le bas.... Was the
rescue action of the Commune a disaster to the accused? Would the
revolutionary tribunal have acquitted them? We hear again the
anguished accents of Robcspierre, when somebody asked
him
to sign
the appeal to the people: "In the name of what?" Saint-Just was
less of a legalist. No surprise, no succession of events or random hap–
penings can entirely account for the suicidal behavior of his last
night, nor explain his silence, like the toga of Caesar raised before
his murderers. He seems to have accepted
his
rescue with the same
bitter indifference he showed at his execution.
Then there is the question of friendship. Let us not underesti–
mate its power. It is because they were friends that Don Quixote
and Sancho Panza, Bouvard and Pecuchet, are more than mere gro–
tesques. Robespierre's only known intimates were the Duplays; in
the view of history, his friends were those who died with him, and
for
him,
like the faithful for an idol with closed eyes; he did not die
for them. Saint-Just was one of the faithful. And doubtless history
is not mistaken about him, since he wore the mask of friendship even
under the guillotine.
But neither the image of the mascot of the Terror nor of the
exemplary friend are enough to distinguish Saint-Just the Great Ac–
cuser from Robespierre.ln France's memory, in which the Revolution
