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Frev friendships — Saint-Just and Robespierre

I’ve already made a post laying out all for me avaliable primary sources relating to the relationship between Saint-Just and Robespierre. However, seeing as said relationship is one of the most, shall we say ”mythical” of the French Revolution overall and here on tumblr in particular, I thought it would be interesting to make a post where all these pieces get put into a more ”chronological” order as well.

The very first piece we have connecting Saint-Just and Robespierre is the following letter, written from the former to the latter on August 19 1790, apropos of local politics in Saint-Just’s hometown Blérancourt:

You who supports the tottering homeland against the torrent of despotism and intrigue, you whom I only know, like God, through his miracles; I speak to you, monsieur, to ask you to unite with me in order to save my sad homeland. The city of Gouci has relocated (this rumour goes around here) the free markets from the town of Blérancourt. Why do the cities devour the privileges of the countryside? Will there remain no more of them to the latter than size and taxes? Support, please, with all your talent, an address that I make for the same letter, in which I request the reunion of my heritage with the national areas of the canton, so that one lets to my country a privilege without which it has to die of hunger. I do not know you, but you are a great man. You are not only the deputy of a province, you are one of humanity and of the Republic. Please, make it that my request be not despised. I have the honour to be, monsieur, your most humble, most obedient servant. Saint-Just, constituent of the department of Aisne. To Monsieur de Robespierre in the National Assembly in Paris. Blérancourt, near Noyon, August 19, 1790.

We don’t know if Robespierre responded to this letter or if there were any more contacts between them from this moment up until the fall of 1792, when both of them were elected to the National Convention and Saint-Just for this reason headed to Paris. He moved in on 7 Rue de Gaillon, where he would stay until March 1794, when he changed address to 3 Rue de Caumartin (today’s No. 5). Both of these places were within a ten minute walking distance from Robespierre’s home on 398 Rue Saint-Honoré.

The confirmed interactions between the two do however continue to be few. On November 4 1792, in his second speech ever held in the capital, Saint-Just mentions Robespierre’s name for the very first time, stating:

Citizens, I do not know what plot is being hatched, but everything is stirring, everything is in turmoil in Paris: Paris is teeming with soldiers; and it is at the moment when it is a question of judging the former king, when they want to destroy Robespierre, that they are calling for so many armed men: however the republic no longer has to fear external enemies.

On November 30, Saint-Just is then recorded to have tried to calm things down after a murmur erupted the moment Robespierre climbed the Convention’s tribune. A month later, January 1 1793, while serving as president at the Jacobin club, Saint-Just intervened to make sure a recent speech of Robespierre’s got printed — ”by imitating the patriots who each deposited fifty écus to have Robespierre's excellent speech printed, you will have done well for the homeland.”

Robespierre for his part mentions Saint-Just’s name for the first time in number 4 (January 1793) of the second series of his journal Lettres de Maximilien Robespierre à ses commettans, apropos of Saint-Just’s vote in the trial of Louis XVI, in which both had stood for the same hardline for death with no appeal to the people: ”We noted this thought of Saint-Just: If I did not hold from the people the right to condemn the tyrant, I would hold it from the nation: I vote against the appeal [to the people].” This is the one and only time he mentions Saint-Just in the journal, which met its death the following month. A month later, February 18 1793, Saint-Just and Robespierre, alongside ten others, were elected by the jacobin club to sit on a so called Constitution committee, charged with within fifteen days presenting a draft for a constitution. Shortly thereafter, March 9, Saint-Just left Paris for a mission to l’Aisne, from which he returned on March 31 (all timestamps for his missions are from this timeline).

We don’t know much else about the relationship until their time on the Committee of Public Safety, to which Saint-Just was elected on June 5 and Robespierre on July 27 1793. According to the memoirs of Barère (volume 2, page 96-97), it was Saint-Just and Couthon who first laid out the proposal to the committee that Robespierre should enter it as well, a proposal which carried through. Barère nevertheless also writes Robespierre and Saint-Just rarely came to the committe, instead working in a private office ”under pretext that their duties were completely private” (volume 2, page 146). Fellow Committee of Public Safety colleague Prieur de la Côté d’Or similarily wrote the following in his Révélations sur le Comité de salut public (written in 1830):

Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon were inseparable. The first two had a dark and duplicitous character; they pushed away with a kind of disdainful pride any familiarity or affectionate relationship with their colleagues. The third, a legless man with a pale appearance, affected good-nature, but was no less perfidious than the other two. All three of them had a cold heart, without pity, they interacted only with each other, holding mysterious meetings outside, having a large number of protégés and agents, impenetrable in their designs.

If these testimonies are to be treated with a grain of salt given the authors and the time they were written, it nevertheless does seem rather well established that Saint-Just and Robespierre had gotten closer to each other at the time they both entered the committee. On a private list made up of ”patriots with more or less talent” written around this time, Robespierre has placed ”Jacquier, Saint-Just’s brother-in-law” already on fifth place. In the pamphlet Causes secrètes de la révolution du 9 au 10 thermidor (October 1794), Joachim Vilate recalled that, on October 17 1793, Barère invited him, Saint-Just and Robespierre to dinner:

Saint-Just was delayed: I was sent to get him. I found him at the committee, he was writing. Upon hearing Robespierre's name, he followed me. On the way, he seemed surprised, lost in thought. ”Robespierre, dining with Barère! He is the only one he has forgiven.” I leave it to the politicians to delve into the meaning of these obscure words, which escaped his lips.

The same day Vilate claims this dinner took place, Saint-Just was charged with going on a mission to the Rhin army together with Lebas. During this mission, we see that the two, besides letters addressed to the entire Committee of Public Safety, also wrote some to Robespierre personally, with him being the only committee member they’re confirmed to have done that with. In letter dated October 25, Lebas tells Robespierre that ”Saint-Just doesn’t have time to write to you. He gives you his compliments.” Eleven days later, November 5, Lebas writes yet another letter to Robespierre, and this time Saint-Just too adds a few words in a post-scriptum note. It can be noted that Saint-Just addresses Robespierre with tutoiement here, while Lebas instead uses vouvoiement, another hint the two have gotten closer:

Trust no longer has a price when we share it with corrupt men, then we do our duty out of love for our homeland alone, and this feeling is purer. I embrace you, my friend. Saint-Just. To Robespierre the older.

On November 21, Robespierre is recorded to have read aloud a different letter from Saint-Just and Lebas to the jacobin club, giving an idea of their mission and praising the way they had carried it out — ”Understand the obligations we owe to Saint-Just and Lebas.”

Saint-Just and Lebas returned to Paris on December 4, just two days after the French taking of Namur. In his memoirs (volume 2, page 123-125), Barére recalled that upon hearing the news of this siege, Robespierre and Saint-Just linked arms in insisting that only letters from generals should be read to the Convention, without any added comments which could exaggerate the content, and asked that Barére in particular be held back from announcing victories in the future, finding he did this with too much ”enthusiasm,” arranging for Couthon to tell the Convention about Namur instead.

Already on December 14, Saint-Just and Lebas got tasked with going on yet another mission. In her memoirs, Élisabeth Lebas recalled how she, devestated over having to seperate from her husband again, asked Robespierre to let her join the two. Robespierre in his turn spoke to Saint-Just to engage him in this idea, something which he, with a few conditions, consented to. According to Élisabeth, it was also Robespierre who had chosen Lebas to accompany Saint-Just in the first place, since he felt their characters complemented each other well.

On December 14, we also find yet another letter from Saint-Just to Robespierre:

We have made too many laws and too few examples: you punish but the salient crimes, the hypocritical crimes go unpunished. Punish a slight abuse in each part, it is the way to frighten the wicked, and to make them see that the government has its eye on everything. No sooner do we turn our backs than the aristocracy rises in the tone of the day, and commits evils under the colors of liberty. Engage the committee to give much pomp to the punishment of all faults in government. Before a month has passed you will have illuminated this maze in which counter-revolution and revolution march haphazardly. Call, my friend, the attention of the Jacobin Club to the strong maxims of the public good; let it concern itself with the great means of governing a free state. I invite you to take measures to find out if all the manufactures and factories of France are in activity, and to favor them, because our troops would within a year find themselves without clothes; manufacturers are not patriots, they do not want to work, they must be forced to do so, and not let down any useful establishment. We will do our best here. I embrace you and our mutual friends. Saint-Just. To Robespierre the older.

Two weeks later, December 29 1793, Robespierre in his turn wrote a letter to Saint-Just and Lebas:

Paris, 9 nivôse, year 2 of the Republic. Friends. I feared, in the midst of our successes, and on the eve of a decisive victory, the disastrous consequences of a misunderstanding or of a ridiculous intrigue. Your principles and your virtues reassured me. I have supported them as much as I could. The letter that the Committee of Public Safety sent you at the same time as mine will tell you the rest. I embrace you with all my soul. Robespierre.

One day later, December 30, Saint-Just came back to Paris again. He went on yet another mission between January 22 and February 13. According to journalist Georges Duval’s Souvernirs thermidoriens (1844), following Saint-Just return from this mission, ”their intimacy became greater than ever, and Saint-Just's devotion to Robespierre knew no bounds.” Robespierre would have repaid this devotion by ”[using] all his influence to bring him, almost upon his arrival, to the chair of the presidency [of the Convention],” which Saint-Just was indeed elected to fill on February 19.

When the Committee of Public Safety roughly a month later decided to purge the ”indulgents,” Robespierre and Saint-Just worked out their indictment together, Robespierre writing notes that Saint-Just used when writing up the act of accusation, which Robespierre then got to proofread and make adjustments to. In the pamphlet À Maximilien Robespierre aux enfers (1795) Taschereau de Fargues also claimed that two days after the signing of the arrest on March 30, the Committee of General Security’s Vadier had told him that Robespierre and Saint-Just both had wanted the accused men to be present in the Convention when the report they had worked out was read out against them, something which they had been outvoted on.

There’s also the allegation that Saint-Just would have influenced Robespierre to abandon the ”indulgents.” In Principaux évènemens, pour et contre la Révolution, dont les détails ont été ignorés jusqu’à présent: et prédiction de Danton au Tribunal révolutionnaire, accomplie (1794), Louis-Marie Villain d’Aubigny reports about an attempt to bring Robespierre and Danton together a fortnight before the latter’s death. Danton would then have stated that he suspected ”the intrigues and the hatred that several members of the Committee of Public Safety have dedicated to me, notably Messieurs Saint-Just and Billaud-Varennes” had pushed Robespierre away from him. Number 22 of Bulletin du tribunal révolutionnaire also records Danton to during his trial have exclaimed: ”I must talk about three flat rascals that have lost Robespierre.” Even more interesting is an unfinished, unsent letter Lucile Desmoulins wrote to Robespierre shortly after the arrest of her husband. Reminding him of his abandonment, she singles out Saint-Just in particular as responsible for it:

…As far from the insensibility of your Saint-Just as from his base jealousies, [Camille] recoiled in front if the idea of accusing a college comrade, a companion in arms. […] Robespierre, can you really complete the fatal projects which the vile souls that surround you no doubt have inspired you to? […] Had I been Saint-Just’s wife I would tell him this: the sake of Camille is yours, it’s the sake of all the friends of Robespierre!

Lucile’s letter is, as far as I’m aware, the only example we have of a contemporary tying Robespierre and Saint-Just together that came into existence prior to their death. But if there is anything to the claims that Robespierre was ”influenced” or ”coaxed” into abandoning the indulgents is of course harder to say for sure…

Barère too writes in his memoirs (volume 1, page 102-103), that after the month of March 1794, Robespierre’s conduct seemingly changed, a change which Saint-Just to a big degree was the cause of. Barère claims the latter would have urged Robespierre to seek dictatorial powers, while the rest of the Committee of Public Safety tried to warn him Saint-Just was formed of ”more dictatorial stuff” and would only end up overthrowing him and taking his place (note that Hyppolite Carnot reported Barère to in 1832 have told David the exact same thing in Notice historique sur Barère: député à l'Assemblée constituante, à la Convention nationale, et à la Chambre des représentants (1842) p. 118). While again such a claim should be taken with a grain of salt, we find reports of fights at the Committee of Public Safety between Carnot and Saint-Just in which similar accusations would have been uttered alleged to have taken place around the very same time. The first fight, reported by Prieur de la Côté d’Or and printed in Mémoires sur Carnot (1869), volume 1, page 523-524, took place a few days after the execution of the dantonists on April 5, with Saint-Just denouncing Carnot for having been to hesitant when it came to this purge, to which Carnot replied that ”he had his eye on him and his friend Robespierre, and that their ambitious aims were not going unnoticed,” but that they would not succeed (on March 23 1795 the same Prieur left a less detailed description of this fight to the Convention, declaring it had been the very first fight that broke out within the Committee of Public Safety). The second fight was reported by Barère, Collot d’Herbois and Billaud-Varennes in Réponse des membres des deux anciens Comités de salut public et de sûreté générale (Barère, Collot, Billaud, Vadier), aux imputations renouvellées contre eux… (1795) and took place at the end of the same April. This time, the fight originally revolved around the subject of portable weapons but quickly got out of hand, with Saint-Just threatening Carnot with the guillotine and Carnot accusing Saint-Just and his friends of aspiring to dictatorship and even calling them ”ridiculous dictators.” The next day, Saint-Just and Robespierre arrived at the committee together, and, just after entering, Saint-Just took Robespierre’s hand and said to Carnot: ”Well, here you have my friends, here are the ones you attacked yesterday!”

Not long after this incident, April 30, Saint-Just and Lebas were tasked with going on yet another mission. On May 4 we find the following letter to them from Robespierre:

My friends, the committee has taken all the measures within its control at this time to support your zeal. It has asked me to write to you to explain the reasons for some of its provisions. It believed that the main cause of the last failure was the shortage of skilled generals, it will send you all the patriotic and educated soldiers that can be found. It thought it necessary at this time to re-use Stetenhofen, whom it is sending to you, because he has military merit, and because the objections made against him seem at least to be balanced by proofs of loyalty. He also relies on your wisdom and your energy. Salut et amitié. Paris, 15 floréal, year 2 of the Republic. Robespierre.

Three weeks later, May 25, we find the following CPS decree recalling Saint-Just to Paris, written by Robespierre and signed by him, Prieur, Carnot, Billaud-Varennes and Barère (Saint-Just would be back by May 31):

Dear colleague, Liberty is exposed to new dangers; the factions arise with a character more alarming than ever. The lines to get butter are more numerous and more turbulent than ever when they have the least pretexts, an insurrection in the prisons which was to break out yesterday and the intrigues which manifested themselves in the time of Hébert are combined with assassination attemps on several occasions against members of the Committee of Public Safety; the remnants of the factions, or rather the factions still alive, are redoubled in audacity and perfidy. There is fear of an aristocratic uprising, fatal to liberty. The greatest peril that threatens it is in Paris. The Committee needs to bring together the lights and energy of all its members. Calculate whether the army of the North, which you have powerfully contributed to putting on the path to victory, can do without your presence for a few days. We will replace you, until you return, with a patriotic representative. The members composing the Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre, Prieur, Carnot, Billaud-Varennes, Barère.

This recall might have been especially prompted by the assassination attempts against Collot d’Herbois and Robespierre on May 22 and 23. But according to Collot, Billaud-Varennes and Barère, it was also caused by Robespierre wanting to denounce and punish ”new conspirators” within the Convention. After the Committee of Public Safety had refused to go along with taking further measures, arguing that weakening the Convention would be too dangerous, Robespierre asked that Saint-Just be recalled. During a committee meeting shortly after his return, Saint-Just asked Robespierre what the purpose of it was, the latter responding it was to ”make a report on the new factions which threatened to destroy the National Convention,” while all the other committee members kept stubbornly silent. This silence angered Robespierre, who shortly thereafter left the meeting. (Réponse de Barère, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d’Herbois et Vadier aux imputations de Laurent Lecointre (1795), page 102)

Saint-Just was sent back to the Army of the North on June 10, the same day Couthon and Robespierre introduced the Law of 22 Prairial to the Convention. According to his friend Pierre-Germain Gateau, Saint-Just, unlike his two older allies, had not been in support of said law. In a note written in July 1795 (published in Fragmens sur les institutions républicaines: ouvrage posthume de Saint-Just (1831), page 25), Gateau recalled that he had instead seen Saint-Just express indignation over it in the garden of the Marchiennes headquarters. But he also remembered that Saint-Just on the same occasion ”spoke only with enthusiasm about Robespierre's talents and authority, and he paid him a kind of worship.”

According to Billaud, Collot and Barère, Robespierre soon once again called for Saint-Just’s return, and after much struggle he had his way — ”[Saint-Just] returned at the moment when he was most needed by the army and when he was least expected: he returned the day after the battle of Fleurus.” Billaud, Collot and Barère claimed that it from this moment on was impossible to get him to leave again, ”although Gillet, representative of the people to the army, continued to ask for him.” (Réponse de Barère, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d’Herbois et Vadier aux imputations de Laurent Lecointre (1795), page 102)

In a speech to the Convention held August 30 1794, the deputy Levasseur declared to on June 28 (probably June 29, the same day Saint-Just returned from the army) have been present at the Committee of Public Safety and there have witnessed Barère, Collot and Billaud ”treat Robespierre like a dictator,” causing the latter to ”fly into an incredible fury” and leave the meeting together with Saint-Just. This could possibly be the same incident Barère talks about when in his memoirs (volume 2, page 167-168), describing yet another fight that would have occured after Saint-Just’s return, with members of both the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security wanting to revoke the law of 22 prairial, the members of the former declaring it had had no part in it, and those of the latter attacking ”the law and its authors with the greatest force and indignation.” To this, Robespierre and Saint-Just would have declared that they would appeal to public opinion, telling it that a party was forming seeking to ”assure immunity to the enemies of the people.” The two would have left uttering threats against the rest the committee, Saint-Just telling Carnot in particular that he was an aristocrat and threatening to denounce him to the Convention, causing Barère to attack Saint-Just in turn. Robert Lindet did in his turn recall how Robespierre after this fight had left the committee before Saint-Just, shouting: ”Save the homeland without me!” Lindet would then have turned to Saint-Just, who, along with Lebas, during the same meeting together would have proposed making Robespierre dictator, and exclaimed: “We did not make the Revolution for the benefit of just one person. Tell your (ton) master that I oppose this decree.” (anecdote cited in Robert Lindet, député à l'Assemblée législative et à la Convention, membre du Comité de salut public, ministre des finances : notice biographique (1899) page 247).

Following this date Robespierre is shown to have signed very few Committee of Public Safety decrees, while his colleagues affirm that he no longer showed up to the committee’s meetings. Saint-Just did however still do so.

On July 23, the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security held a joint meeting to patch up their inner divisions. In a speech held to the Convention on March 23 1795, deputy Philippe Rühl, who claimed to have been present for it, said that he there saw ”Robespierre, walking with long strides, glasses on his nose and throwing at everyone, from the height of his grandeur, looks which marked the deepest contempt.” After a few minutes, Saint-Just did however speak up, talking about the necessity of organizing a constitution and ”making a pompous eulogy of Robespierre, calling him the martyr of the liberty of his country and assuring him of all his esteem,” an eulogy which was then ”applauded and confirmed” by Lebas. Robespierre then started complaining about his many enemies and attacking fellow committee members once again, leading to yet another heated argument within the green room. Eventually, they did however come to their senses again and decide that Saint-Just was to make a report on behalf of the two Committees to inform the National Convention that they were not divided.

Élisabeth Duplay Lebas, Robespierre’s host’s daughter, placed Saint-Just among the people who would ”always” frequent their house in a note written in the 1840s. Her little brother Jacques-Maurice did on the other hand in an interrogation held January 1 1795 (cited in the article Les divisions dans les comités de gouvernement à la veille du 9 thermidor d’après quelques documents inédits (1915) by Albert Mathiez, page 85-87) recall that Saint-Just rarely dined with the family, but on the other hand often went straight up to Robespierre’s office without talking to anyone. In the very same interrogation, Jacques-Maurice did however recall a dinner held ”a few days before thermidor” where Saint-Just had been present, and during which he and Robespierre had seemed to be ”very divided.” Asked if he knew what these divisions had been about, Jacques-Maurice responded that he ”only learned about it through the discussions which took place on this subject at the Jacobins and through the altercation which was said to have taken place at the Committee of Public Safety between Robespierre older and Carnot.”

A few days later, Robespierre held his (in)famous 8 thermidor speech calling for new proscriptions of members of the government, first at the Convention where it wasn’t that well received, and in the evening at the jacobins where things went better. Collot d’Herbois and Billaud-Varennes who were present for the latter scene, got driven out of the club with cries of ”to the guillotine!” when they tried to speak up after the speech (La Société des Jacobins: recueil de documents pour l'histoire du club des Jacobins de Paris, volume 6, page 282-283). In Réponse des membres des deux anciens Comités de salut public et de sûrété générale… (1795) page 105-108, Collot recalled how he following this incident had gone over to the Committee of Public Safety and there found Saint-Just, Barère and the Committee of General Security’s Élie Lacoste. After Saint-Just asked him what was new at the jacobins, Collot told him to stop playing dumb, and that it was clear he was on Robespierre’s side and wanted to lead them into civil war. Lacoste and Barère joined his side, exclaiming that Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon formed a triumvirate plotting against the homeland. Saint-Just turned pale from their talk and emptied his pockets to show he didn’t have anything to hide, but no one cared, and Collot instead said that the report Saint-Just got tasked with writing three days earlier was most likely in actuality an act of accusation, but that he should not expect them to sit tight when he read it the next day. Saint-Just responded by assuring he was going to show the committee his report before doing anything, and not read it without it’s approval. But a little later he also told Collot that he could be reproached for having made remarks against Robespierre in a café, admitting he had included this charge as ”the basis of an indictment against Collot” in the speech he had prepared. Five o'clock in the morning, Saint-Just finally left the committee, while the other members started ”[seeking] means to paralyze the armed force of Paris, which the scoundrels had in their hands.” At noon, a messanger arrived to inform them that Saint-Just was at the rostrum of the Convention, and also handed them a letter from him where he with the following words took back his promise to let them see the speech before holding it: ”Injustice has closed my heart, I’m going to open it entirely to the National Convention.” This caused them to rush over to the Convention as well.

Saint-Just’s speech, contrary to his colleagues’ fears, was not the follow-up to Robespierre’s call to new proscriptions. Instead, Saint-Just disavowed this move and proclaimed that Robespierre during yesterday’s session ”did not explain himself clearly enough, to tell the truth, but his alienation and the bitterness in his soul can excuse him somewhat: he does not know why he is being persecuted, he knows nothing except his misfortune.” Saint-Just added that this bitterness and misfortune came from Robespierre having been forced to withdraw from the Committee of Public Safety ”due to the bitterest treatment,” even though he had only ever spoken ”gently” in the committee so as not to undermine any of its members, and that there is nothing wrong with being tenderhearted. Nevertheless, while blaming Billaud, Collot and Barère for targeting Robespierre, Saint-Just made clear that ”I make no accusation against those I have named. What I want is for them to justify themselves,” and underlined that the government wasn’t divided.

However, he never got the time to lay out these points, as he, four paragraphs into the speech, got shouted down by threatened Convention deputies who presumably had taken it for granted Saint-Just would support Robespierre’s plan. After a few hours, the Convention voted for the arrest of both Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon, with Fréron declaring that the three ”wanted to form a triumvirate which would bring the bloody proscriptions of Sulla back.” (Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, volume 34, page 6-40). After that, the three, alongside Lebas and Augustin Robespierre who volonteered to share their fate, were taken to the Committee of General Security and served dinner, before getting seperated and taken to different prisons — Robespierre to the Luxembourg, Saint-Just to the Ecossais. However, shortly before midnight both had been liberated and brought to the Hôtel de Ville, where they, alongside Augustin Robespierre, put their signatures on a letter urging Couthon to join them as well. At some point after Couthon’s arrival, he, Saint-Just, Robespierre and Lebas presented themselves before the conseil géneral of the … together and were met with ”the most vivid applause.” (Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française, volume 34, page 55).

Shortly thereafter however, the Hôtel de Ville was stormed. Saint-Just was the only one of the five outlawed Convention deputies to not be injured in the tumult that followed, Lebas blowing his brains out, Augustin jumping out a window, Couthon falling down a flight of stairs and Robespierre taking a gunshot to the jaw, fired either by himself or by a guard. His unconscious body was eventually taken from the Hôtel de Ville to the Committee of Public Safety and laid out on a table there. In the anonymous pamphlet Faits recueillis aux derniers instants de Robespierre et de sa saction, du 9 au 10 thermidor released a few months later, it is described how a shackled Saint-Just, Dumas and Payan at some point during the night were brought into the room with the words: ”move back, let these gentlemen see their King sleep on a table, just like a man.” The pamphlet specifies that ”Saint-Just moves his head in order to see Robespierre. Saint-Just’s figure appeared dejected and humiliated, his swollen eyes expressed chagrin.” Saint-Just, Payan and Dumas were then taken to the Conciergerie prison, as was Robespierre a few hours later. Around six o’clock in the evening, all four, alongside 18 others, were loaded into three tumbrils and sent to the Place de la Révolution, where they arrived around one hour later. I’ve not found any description of the execution that mentions any final interaction between Saint-Just and Robespierre.

Descriptions from contemporaries of the relationship that I could not fit in anywhere else

Saint-Just was no ordinary man; with better guidance, he could have become a useful figure. But the name "Incorruptible," bestowed upon Robespierre, led him astray. He saw Robespierre as a role model and, foolishly, also craved fame. He listened to the treacherous voice of ambition, that human folly, that stubborn affliction from which one can never be cured. His mentor's policies must have seemed barbaric to him. But then Saint-Just forced himself to abandon all human sentiment: he rejected the most beautiful gift from heaven; his own conscience was for him nothing more than a prejudice to be overcome, and he sought virtue in the fury of anarchy. "He who merely bears a human face is not a man," he declared from the tribune; "I see no men but those born with the seeds of liberty." Note written by Saint-Just’s friend Augustin Lejeune in 1812, cited in the article Curiosités révolutionnaires: Saint-Just et les bureaux de la police générale (1896) by Alfred Bégis

Intimately linked with Robespierre, [Saint-Just] had become necessary to him, and he had made himself feared perhaps even more than he had desired to be loved. One never saw them divided in opinion, and if the personal ideas of one had to bow to those of the other, it is certain that Saint-Just never gave in. Robespierre had a bit of that vanity which comes from selfishness; Saint-Just was full of the pride that springs from well-established beliefs; without physical courage, and weak in body, to the point of fearing the whistling of bullets, he had the courage of reflection which makes one wait for certain death, so as not to sacrifice an idea. Memoirs of René Levasseur (1829) volume 2, page 324-325.

Often [Robespierre] said to me that Camille was perhaps the one among all the key revolutionaries whom he liked best, after our younger brother and Saint-Just. Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835) page 139.

From that moment on, their intimacy became greater than ever, and Saint-Just's devotion to Robespierre knew no bounds. Mohammed did not find in Omar a more docile instrument nor a more fervent worshipper. He would only worship Robespierre: Robespierre was everything to him. According to him, the republic did not possess a greater citizen, nor the convention a greater orator, and when he compared him to Lycurgus, Solon, Numa, and other famous legislators of iniquity, it was to show by how many cubits his stature exceeded theirs. Robespierre repaid Saint-Just's devotion to him with the most tender reciprocity and neglected no opportunity to promote him. Thus he used all his influence to bring him, almost upon his arrival, to the chair of the presidency, and this indeed took place on February 19, 1794. Souvernirs thermidoriens (1844) by Georges Duval, volume 1, page 189-190.

Volume 8 — page 153. ”Saint-Just, his (Robespierre’s) only confident.” His only confident? Élisabeth Lebas comments on a passage in Alphonse de Lamartine’s Histoire des Girondins (1847)

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