Now he was of the People; he had been stirred to his lowest depths.

His earnestness was almost a frenzy.
He BELIEVED, and so to him all things were possible at once.
Then the artist in him reasserted itself.

He became more interested in his poem, as such, than in the cause that had inspired it.

He went over it again, retouching it carefully, changing a word here and there, and improving its rhythm.

For the moment, he forgot the People, forgot his rage, his agitation of the previous hour, he remembered only that he had written a great poem.
Then doubt intruded.