Many call the journalist ”Camille Desmoulins” and not ”Desmoulins.” The man of letters Linguet, the deputies Mirabeau, Sillery and Anthoine, and a number of the correspondents to the journal, even if they’ve never met its author, settle for ”Camille.” How can one not be surprised over that? After all, the habit of the century is to refer to men by their surname only, even when they are well known; the use of the first name hardly goes beyond the intimate circle. Historians have explained this apparent familiarity by the journalist’s youth and cheerfulness; how many authors, taking up the formula of Robespierre (1794) have not called him ”a spoiled child”? And how many, since Michelet (1847) ”un enfant terrible”? In the eyes of everyone, Camille is ”this child so naïve and so spiritual” that Fréron celebrates after the revolutionary events. One calls him by his firstname, like one would for a rascal… Nothing is more incorrect. From 1790, ”Camille” ceases to be a firstname to become a name; the journalist becomes ”Camille” or ”Camille-Desmoulins,” and it’s the letter C one must search for in the index of Révolutions de Paris or in le Petit dictionnaire des grands hommes de la Révolution. For those who identify him with the speaker of Palais-Royal, for Loustalot, for Cloots, for Robespierre, he has become the French Camillus; and he himself is convinced of having saved the revolution on July 12, like the general Camillus saved Rome from Brennus in the fourth century BCE. Where many contemporaries opt for ancient sounding names (Anacharsis Cloots, Gracchus Babeuf, Anaxagoras Chaumette…), the journalist manages to transform his name into a Roman and glorious reference. His opponents, moreover, do not fail to mock such a clever sleight of hand: ”His godfather, who meddled in judical astrology,” one reads in the Chronique du Manège (1790), ”thought it neccesary to give him at baptism the name of Camille. He had read in the stars that one day his godson would save France from the rapacity of the ministers, as once Furius Camillus had saved Rome from the fury of Brennus. This prediction has fortunately come true, and posterity will always share its admiration between Camille the dictator and Camille the folliculaire.” The attack is part of a work meant to discredit, that the journalist perceives as the ransom of his notority: if he has become ”Camille,” it’s because he matters in the political arena.
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