A few others may live correctly, but
they oppose or betray principles; a few others profess to have
principles, but they do not live correctly. No one else leads so pure
a life or is so loyal to principles; no one else joins to so fervent a
worship of truth so strict a practice of virtue: I am the unique." -
What can be more agreeable than this mute soliloquy? From the very
first day it can be heard toned down in Robespierre's address to the
Third-Estate of Arras;[107] the last day it is spoken aloud in his
great speech in the Convention;[108] during the interval, it crops out
and shines through all his compositions, harangues, or reports, in
exordiums, parentheses and perorations, permeating every sentence like
the drone of a bag-pipe.[109] - Through the delight he takes in this
he can listen to nothing else, and it is just here that the outward
echoes supervene and sustain with their accompaniment the inward
cantata which he sings to his own glory. Towards the end of the
Constituent Assembly, through the withdrawal or the elimination of
every man at all able or competent, he becomes one of the conspicuous
tenors on the political stage, while in the Jacobin Club he is
decidedly the tenor most in vogue.
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