Jotting down some rough notes and sentences, he stopped to look out of the window in a dreamy, absent manner, apparently without thought. Thirty-five years ago, amid the same surroundings, in that same room, on that very table, Rousseau had written those burning pages of romance under whose influence Robespierre had stammered forth his first love tale on the shoulder of Clarisse. Did he ever think of that drama of his youth, of that living relic of his sin wandering about the world perhaps, his child, the fruit of his first love, whose advent into life Clarisse had announced to him some months after the terrible scene at the Rue des Lions-Saint-Paul? Think? He had more important things to trouble him! Think indeed! The idea had never entered his head. For many years the intellectual appetite had alone prevailed in him;--egoism, and that masterful ambition which asks no other intoxicant than the delirium of success, and the thought of realising one day, by terrorism even if necessary, Utopian theories of universal equality. And yet the letter in which Clarisse had apprised him of her approaching motherhood would have moved a stone:-- "DEAR MAXIMILIEN,--I never thought to write to you after the solemn promise torn from me by my father, the day he declared I should never be your wife. An unexpected event releases me from my oath, and brings me nearer to you. "I am about to become a mother. "My father knows this. I thought that the announcement would conquer his resistance, but I was mistaken. My supplications were vain. "He persists unshaken in his refusal, exasperated at my entreaties, and is resolved to send me to a convent, where the innocent being whose life is already considered a crime will first see the light. My heart bleeds at the thought of the wide gulf that must separate you from your child, orphaned before its birth. And what pain for you to have a child that you must never know! But I will spare you this. You are the disposer of our destiny, Maximilien. We are yours. "I have some money saved, which, in addition to the kind help of Mademoiselle Jusseaume, would enable us to cross to England, where a priest of our faith will bless our union. We can return afterwards to France, if you wish; that shall be as you judge best, for you will have no wife more submissive and devoted than the mother of your child. "I am sending this letter to your aunt's at Arras, requesting them to forward it to you. Write to me at the Poste Restante, Rue du Louvre, under the name of the kind-hearted Mademoiselle Jusseaume, who is reading over my shoulder while I write, her eyes full of tears. Wherever I may be, your reply will always reach me. "I kiss thee from my soul, dear companion of my heart--that heart which through all its sufferings burns with an undying love and is thine forever. "CLARISSE DE PONTIVY."