There is in the Museum at Troyes a portrait by David of Danton’s first wife,[7] the brave Gabrielle, a healthy, capable and intelligent housewife with black eyes and rosy cheeks--a true type of the new Bourgeoisie. She seems to have been as cheerful as she was kind, and gave Danton several children to whom he was tenderly attached. She was destined not to see his downfall. When in February, 1793, he returned from the Belgian front, he found that his wife had died and been buried several days previously. It is characteristic both of his love for her and his untamed nature that seven days after her death he had both grave and coffin opened up, embraced the corpse and commissioned a sculptor friend to make a death mask and a bust of her. His friends had great difficulty in saving him from an emotional breakdown. Even the cool Robespierre sought to comfort him in the most feeling manner in a letter in which he pledges him his devotion and friendship unto death. How quickly and how passionately they lived, these revolutionaries! A couple of months later Danton married a sixteen-year-old girl, and a year after that, Robespierre, who had promised--and undoubtedly with sincere conviction--to be true to him till death, brought him to the guillotine. The dual rule of two temperaments so opposed as Danton’s and Robespierre’s could not endure for long. One cannot conceive a greater contrast than that between the robust Danton, who loudly proclaimed his every thought and the elegant frail Robespierre who was all self-control and deliberation. How clever and calculating an actor Robespierre was is shown by the account of his attempted murder by a young girl after the manner of Marat’s. The attempt failed. The crowd surged up the stairs to his room to congratulate him. Robespierre was seated in a corner calmly peeling an orange. Without a word he looked sternly at the intruding crowd, till in embarrassment they crept away. In his place Danton undoubtedly would have launched into an impassioned speech of thanks. Robespierre and his friend St. Just (Fig. 21) are both men of pleasing appearance--almost good-looking as compared to Danton’s ugly bull-dog countenance. They were, especially Robespierre, who wore a wig and sword to the last, neat and even elegant in their dress, which differed sharply from Danton’s almost gypsy-like effect.