en. On the day he delivers his apology before
the Convention "the passages are lined with women[31112].... seven
or eight hundred of them in the galleries, and but two hundred men at
most;" and how frantically they cheer him! He is a priest surrounded by
devotees."[31113] In the Jacobin club, when he delivers his "amphigory,"
there are sobs of emotion, "outcries and stamping of feet almost making
the house tumble."[31114] An onlooker who shows no emotion is greeted
with murmurs and obliged to slip out, like a heretic that has
strayed into a church on the elevation of the Host.--The faster the
revolutionary thunderbolts fall on other heads, so does Robespierre
mount higher and higher in glory and deification. Letters are addressed
to him as "the founder of the Republic, the incorruptible genius
who foresees all and saves all, who can neither be deceived nor
seduced;"[31115] who has "the energy of a Spartan and the eloquence of
an Athenian;"[31116] "who shields the Republic with the aegis of his
eloquence;"[31117] who "illuminates the universe with his writings,
fills the world with his renown and regenerates the human species here
below;"[31118] whose" name is now, and will be, held in veneration for
all ages, present and to come;"[31119] who is "the Messiah promised by
the Eternal for universal reform."[31120] An extraordinary popularity,"
says Billaud-Varennes,[31121] a popularity which, founded under the
Constituent Assembly, "only increased during the Legislative Assembly,"
and, later on, so much more, that, "in the National Convention he soon
found himself the only one able to fix attention on his person.... and
control public opinion.... With this ascendancy over public opinion,
with this irresistible preponderance, when he reached the Committee of
Public Safety, he was already the most important being in France." After
three years, a chorus of a thousand voices,[31122] which he formed and
directs, repeats again and again in unison his litany, his personal
creed, a hymn of three stanzas composed by him in his own honor, and
which he daily recites to himself in a low tone of voice, and often in a
loud one:

"Robespierre alone has discovered the best type of citizen! Robespierre
alone, modestly and without shortcomings, fits the description!
Robespierre alone is worthy of and able to lead the Revolution!"[31123]

Cool infatuation carried thus far is equivalent to a raging fever, and
Robespierre almost attains to the