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 ideas and the ravings of Marat.
First, in his own eyes, he, like Marat, is a persecuted man, and, like Marat, he poses himself as a "martyr," but more skillfully and keeping within bounds, affecting the resigned and tender air of an innocent victim, who, offering himself as a sacrifice, ascends to Heaven, bequeathing to mankind the imperishable souvenir of his virtues.[31124] "I arouse against me the pride of everybody;[31125] I sharpen against me a thousand daggers.

I am a sacrifice to every species of hatred.