He a dictator! He is merely one of seven hundred deputies, and his authority, if he has any, is simply the legitimate ascendancy of reason and virtue.[31158] He a murderer! If he has denounced conspirators, it is the Convention which summons these before the revolutionary Tribunal,[31159] and the revolutionary Tribunal pronounces judgment on them.

He a terrorist! He merely seeks to simplify the established proceedings, so as to secure a speedier release of the innocent, the punishment of the guilty, and the final purgation that is to render liberty and morals the order of the day.[31160]--Before uttering all this he almost believes it, and, when he has uttered it he believes it fully.[31161] When nature and history combine, to produce a character, they succeed better than man's imagination.

Neither Moliere in his "Tartuffe," nor Shakespeare in his "Richard III.," dared bring on the stage a hypocrite believing himself sincere, and a Cain that regarded himself as an Abel.[31162] There he stands on a colossal stage, in the presence of a hundred thousand spectators, on the 8th of June, 1794, the most glorious day of his life, at that fete in honor of the Supreme Being, which is the glorious triumph of his doctrine and the official consecration of his papacy.

Two characters are found in Robespierre, as in the Revolution which he represents: one, apparent, paraded, external, and the other hidden, dissembled, inward, the latter being overlaid by the former .-- The first one all for show, fashioned out of purely cerebral cogitations, is as artificial as the solemn farce going on around him.

According to David's programme, the cavalcade of supernumeraries who file in front of an allegorical mountain, gesticulate and shout at the command, and under the eyes, of Henriot and his gendarmes,[31163] manifesting at the appointed time the emotions which are prescribed for them.