- "Unique competitor of the Roman
Fabricius," writes the branch club at Marseilles to him; "immortal
defender of popular rights," says the Jacobin crew of Bourges.[110]
One of two portraits of him in the exhibition of 1791 bears the
inscription: "The Incorruptible." At the Moliere Theatre a drama of
the day represents him as launching the thunderbolts of his logic and
virtue at Rohan and Cond?. On his way, at Bapaume, the patriots of
the place, the National Guard on the road and the authorities, come in
a body to honor the great man. The town of Arras is illuminated on
his arrival. On the adjournment of the Constituent Assembly the
people in the street greet him with shouts, crown him with oak
wreaths, take the horses from his cab and drag him in triumph to the
rue St. Honor?, where he lodges with the carpenter Duplay. - Here,
in one of those families in which the semi-bourgeois class borders on
the people, whose minds are unsophisticated, and on whom glittering
generalities and oratorical tirades take full hold, he finds his
worshippers; they drink in his words; they have the same opinion of
him that he has of himself; to every person in the house, husband,
wife and daughter, he is the great patriot, the infallible sage; he
bestows benedictions night and morning; he inhales clouds of incense;
he is a god at home.
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