Robespierre and the women he loved by Angelo Solomon Rappoport..Excerpt from Robespierre and the Women He Loved The life Robespierre breathes that majestic sadness of tragedy of which Jean Racine speaks so divinely. It reflects something of that passionate and melancholy spirit so closely in harmony with the landscapes of the province of Artois. Whoever has visited the valleys of that peaceful country, traversed by rivers, be-sprinkled with green hamlets,
and guarded by belfries, like so many mute sentinels, must have been gripped by the power of the mortal beauty of these landscapes and by their charm of unspeakable nostalgia. On these borders of the French Flanders, Spanish bands, hurled into the Low Countries, had left an indelible impression, the deep traces of their turbulent passage. They had stamped the Flemish soil with their violent and brutal seal.
