Lesser events would have made it turn; his is only a
twenty-eight-year-old head, not very solid, without any inside
ballast,[117] already disturbed by vanity, ambition, rancor, and
apostasy, by the sudden and complete volteface which puts him in
conflict with his past educational habits and most cherished
affections: it breaks down under the vastness and novelty of this
greatness. - In the costume of a representative, a Henry IV hat, tri-
color plume, waving scarf, and saber dragging the ground, Lebon orders
the bell to be rung and summons the villagers into the church, where,
aloft in the pulpit in which he had formerly preached in a threadbare
cassock, he displays his metamorphosis.
"Who would believe that I should have returned here with unlimited
powers!"[118]
And that, before his counterfeit majesty, each person would be humble,
bowed down and silent! To a member of the municipality of Cambray who,
questioned by him, looked straight at him and answered curtly, and
who, to a query twice repeated in the same terms, dared to answer
twice in the same terms, he says:
"Shut up ! You disrespect me, you do not behave properly to the
national representative.
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