A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Renard, Cecile
RENARD, CECILE,
The history of this young girl exhibits the moral phenomenon of the apathy to all that human nature usually shrinks from, which may be produced by living in the constant atmosphere of danger and dismay. Her fate and conduct somewhat, at first sight, resemble those of Charlotte Corday; but upon examination, nothing can be more different. Charlotte Corday, enthusiastic, animated, energetic, set about her purpose in the most sanguine hopes of sacrificing herself for her country; while the aunless act of Cecile seemed to result from disgust of life, and despair of improvement in public affairs. She was born at Paris, the daughter of a stationer. She and her eldest brother occupied themselves in the business of the shop, while the two others were enlisted in the army. Without possessing remarkable beauty, her appearance was very striking and agreeable. She was twenty years of age when she stepped out of the obscurity of private life, and brought herself into the history of Robespierre. It has been said that her hatred to the latter arose from his causing the execution of a young man to whom she was attached; this is an anecdote that wants confirmation, and it is impossible to admit it as a fact. The truth is, she was educated in an aversion to the terrible order of things then prevalent; her imagination was struck with the torrents of blood, the frightful shocks, that daily occurred; and her family, attached to the royalist party, made its losses, and the horrors of the existing government, a constant theme of their private conversations. Her fancy became morbid, her reason perverted, until she considered life an insufferable burden; and she resolved to free herself from it, in a way that should manifest her opinions. With this object, on the 23rd. of May, 1794, she went to the house of Robespierre, carrying a bundle. When they told her he was out, she declared he neglected his duties, and that for her part she would give all she possessed to have a king. This, in those days, was enough to have cost her a hundred lives, if she had had them. She was taken to the comité, and asked what she wanted with Robespierre? "I wanted to see how a tyrant looks." Why she wanted a king? "Because we have five hundred tyrants, and I prefer one king." Why she carried a bundle? "Because, as I expected to go to prison, I wanted a change of clothes." Two knives were found in her bundle—she was asked if she intended to assassinate Robespierre? She said, "No; that she always carried a knife, and in this case had taken the second by mistake; but that they might think as they pleased about it." Being asked who were her accomplices, she denied having any, or the existence of any plot. An old aunt of Cecile's, an ex-nun, together with her father and brothers, were involved in her condemnation. Cecile, dragged to the scaffold, never wavered an instant in her firmness; this girl of twenty met death with the resolution and unmoved demeanour of a stoic.