His family, pure, honest, of property, and industrious, ancient in name, honourable in manners, was established at Arcis-sur-Aube, and possessed a rural domain in the environs of that small town.

It was of the number of those modest but well-esteemed families, who have the soil for their basis, and agriculture as their main occupation, but who give their sons the most complete moral and literary education, and who thus prepare them for the liberal professions of society.

Danton's father died young.
His mother had married again to a manufacturer of Arcis-sur-Aube, who had (and himself managed), a small cotton mill.

There is still to be seen near the river, without the city, in a pleasant spot, the house, half rustic half town built, and the garden on the banks of the Aube, where Danton's infancy was passed.
His step-father, M.Ricordin, attended to his education as he would have done that of his own child.

He was of an open communicative disposition, and was beloved in spite of his ugliness and turbulence; for his ugliness was radiant with intellect, and his turbulence was calmed and repented of at the least caress of his mother.