He takes the hand of a grenadier who wishes to encourage him, and, placing it on his breast, bids him, "See if that is the beating of a heart agitated by fear."[2551] To Legendre and the zealots who call upon him to sanction, he replies without the least excitement: "I have never departed from the Constitution....

I will do what the Constitution requires me to do....

It is you who break the law." -- And, for nearly three hours, remaining standing, blockaded on his bench,[2552] he persists in this without showing a sign of weakness or of anger.

This cool deportment at last produces an effect, the impression it makes on the spectators not being at all that which they anticipated.

It is very clear that the personage before them is not the monster which has been depicted to them, a somber, imperious tyrant, the savage, cunning Charles IX.