[65]
The former, stiff in his starched cravat, posing "like the Holy
Ghost," more didactic and more absolute than Robespierre himself,
comes and proclaims to Frenchmen from the tribune, equality, probity,
frugality, Spartan habits, and a rural cot with all the voluptuousness
of virtue;[66] this suits admirably the chevalier Saint-Just, a former
applicant for a place in the Count d'Artois' body-guard, a domestic
thief, a purloiner of silver plate which he takes to Paris, sells and
spends on prostitutes, imprisoned for six months on complaint of his
own mother,[67] and author of a lewd poem which he succeeds in
rendering filthy by trying to render it fanciful. - Now, indeed, he
is grave; he no longer leers; he kills - but with what arguments, and
what a style![68] The young Laubardemont as well as the paid informers
and prosecutors of imperial Rome, have less disgraced the human
intellect, for these creatures of a Tiberius or a Richelieu still used
plausible arguments in their reasoning, and with more or less
adroitness. With Saint-Just, there is no connection of ideas; there
is no sequence or march in his rhapsody; like an instrument strained
to the utmost, his mind plays only false notes in violent fits and
starts; logical continuity, the art then so common of regularly
developing a theme, has disappeared; he stumbles over the ground,
piling up telling aphorisms and dogmatic axioms.
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