Page:Voices of Revolt - Volume 1.djvu/16

 12 creative genius of Rome, the last genius produced by the ancient world, which continued to move in his orbit until its final dissolution." They love Marcus Cato of Utica, who fell upon his sword, the last of all the republicans; they love the narrow-minded and stupid Brutus and idealize his sword, drawn by him against the greatest man of antiquity. These young men do not regard Marcus Cato and Brutus as the hair-brained ideologists of the republic that no longer existed, since the free Roman peasant was no more; they behold only the republican gesture and the struggle against tyranny, which is their dream.

Classicism molded this generation, which was the soil from which the orators of the Revolution sprang. Roman rhetoric is a constituent element of politics and of the rhetoric of the Revolution. One of Robespierre's fellow-students in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand was the brilliant Camille Desmoulins.

When Louis XVI, whose succession to the throne had been hailed throughout the country with jubilation, since it was expected that he would oppose the clergy and the feudal lords, had visited all the churches of the principal cities and reached the chapel of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, having just left the Church of the Penitent Magdalen, the best student was selected to deliver an oration of welcome, and this best student was Robespierre. He showed the draft of his speech to the rector, who