By his
orders, a platoon of soldiers sought out the child's home and burned it
to the ground; and thus little Francois Delsarte became the innocent
cause of the ruin of his family.
The atrocities committed during the White Terror, of which this incident
is an example, though passed over by history, are not forgotten by the
survivors of that cruel period. The leaders in the second terror could
not plead the ignorance of Robespierre's followers in excuse of their
excesses, for they were nobles, magistrates, priests and officers of
rank.
Delsarte's early years were passed in the midst of cruel privations and
domestic troubles, for even love forsook a home blighted by poverty. His
father, naturally proud and imperious, irritated by straitened
circumstances, out of which there seemed no issue, crushed by the weight
of obligations to others, lost heart and hope, became morose, sceptical
and bitter, and treated his wife and family with such harshness and
injustice, that Delsarte's mother was finally compelled to abandon her
husband. She fled with her two boys to Paris, hoping there to make her
talents available. All her efforts, however, were fruitless, and she
found herself on the verge of starvation.
One evening, as she sat with her two boys in her wretched room, tortured
by their questions after their father, she could not suppress her tears.
Francois, the eldest, then nine years of age, tried to console her.
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