Jacques-Nicolas BILLAUD-VARENNE (1756–1819), a Montagnard me - Lot 431

Lot n° 431
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Result : 4 616EUR
Jacques-Nicolas BILLAUD-VARENNE (1756–1819), a Montagnard me - Lot 431
Jacques-Nicolas BILLAUD-VARENNE (1756–1819), a Montagnard member of the Convention and a member of the Committee of Public Safety, was exiled to French Guiana after 9 Thermidor. Letter from the author, “at the plantation known as Chevreuil” [French Guiana], 2 Thermidor Year VII [July 20, 1799], to his wife Angélique; 2½ pages, quarto (a few old stains). A beautiful and moving letter to his wife, written from his exile in French Guiana. He laments the silence of his dear Angélique, finding their separation and the scarcity of her letters increasingly difficult to bear. “You are the only treasure I have on earth; if indeed I may apply that name to an object from which I am separated by two thousand leagues […] I blame only my fate, which has willed that I endure every imaginable kind of torment. What courage it takes to have to swallow so much bitterness without succumbing! I have been abandoned by those dearest to my heart, stripped of any means to support myself, and reduced to living almost on charity […]. Be that as it may, I do not forget that the sufferings I endure are caused by my devotion to the Republic, and while this consoling thought may not erase them, it at least greatly lessens their bitterness, giving me the strength necessary to bear them with steadfastness.”He can no longer bear the humiliation of having to beg to survive, so he implores him to send him some financial assistance. He had entrusted his last letter to a friend, who was killed in a naval battle: “In that letter, I told you that I had left Sinnamary. Having found refuge in a cottage, this solitary dwelling suits my character no less than my circumstances. This isolation, which would drive another to despair, pleases me greatly because of the peace it affords me. Engaged in rural pursuits, I have almost fulfilled the plan we had made to spend the rest of our days here in peace. However, aside from the heartfelt joys that my poverty deprives me of so painfully, nature here is so wild, its appearance so forbidding, that instead of lifting the spirit with a cheerful glance, this gloomy and sinister spectacle only adds a darker hue to the shadows of melancholy”... He remained ill and was unable to take advantage of the colony’s general’s return to France to send him news. “The climate where I live is so detrimental to health that it is almost a miracle to enjoy several days in a row without any ill effects. Moreover, whether it withstands it or succumbs to it, rest assured that you will not leave my heart until death has frozen it.” He speaks movingly of his wife’s harp, which “conveys, through harmonious sounds, gentle and soothing sensations to the soul”. He learned with sadness of Méhul’s death: “His candor, like his talents, made him precious; and it is an immeasurable loss to the art in which he excelled”… He asks for news of his colleague Ruamps: “A person with whom I have been since my earliest childhood cannot become indifferent to one who clings to life only through the affectionate feelings it has instilled in him”…
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