The one was a young man, said to resemble Robespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expression of countenance.

He entered first, and, looking over the volume in Robespierre's hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture, exclaimed,-- "What! Rousseau's Heloise?
A love-tale!" "Dear Payan, it is not the love,--it is the philosophy that charms me.
What noble sentiments!--what ardour of virtue! If Jean Jacques had but lived to see this day!" While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in his orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeled into the room in a chair.

This man was also in what, to most, is the prime of life,--namely, about thirty-eight; but he was literally dead in the lower limbs: crippled, paralytic, distorted, he was yet, as the time soon came to tell him,--a Hercules in Crime! But the sweetest of human smiles dwelt upon his lips; a beauty almost angelic characterised his features ("Figure d'ange," says one of his contemporaries, in describing Couthon.

The address, drawn up most probably by Payan (Thermidor 9), after the arrest of Robespierre, thus mentions his crippled colleague: "Couthon, ce citoyen vertueux, QUI N'A QUE LE COEUR ET LA TETE DE VIVANS, mais qui les a brulants de patriotisme" (Couthon, that virtuous citizen, who has but the head and the heart of the living, yet possesses these all on flame with patriotism.)); an inexpressible aspect of kindness, and the resignation of suffering but cheerful benignity, stole into the hearts of those who for the first time beheld him.

With the most caressing, silver, flute-like voice, Citizen Couthon saluted the admirer of Jean Jacques.
"Nay,--do not say that it is not the LOVE that attracts thee; it IS the love! but not the gross, sensual attachment of man for woman.