But the Revolution bore him into the Constituent Assembly, where, for
a long time on this great stage, his amour propre, the dominant
feeling of the pedant, suffered terribly. He had already suffered on
this score from his earliest youth, and his wounds being still fresh
made him only the more sensitive. - Born in Arras in 1758, orphaned
and poor, prot?g? of his bishop, a bursar through favor at the college
Louis-le-Grand, later a clerk with Brissot under the revolutionary
system of law-practice, and at length settled down in his gloomy rue
des Rapporteurs as a pettifogger. Living with a bad-tempered sister,
he has adopts Rousseau, whom he had once seen and whom he ardently
studies, for his master in philosophy, politics and style. Fancying,
probably, like other young men of his age and condition, that he could
play a similar part and thus emerge from his blind alley, he published
law pleadings for effect, contended for Academy prizes, and read
papers before his Arras colleagues. His success was moderate: one of
his harangues obtained a notice in the Artois Almanac; the Academy of
Metz awarded him only a second prize; that of Amiens gave him no
prize, while the critic of the "Mercure" spoke of his style as
smacking of the provinces.
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