"One of the advantages of the position in which it has pleased God to place me," he says, "is that I hear the truth told me point-blank and without any circumlocution whatever, and, thank God, I am inured to this. I have found out since that what once galled my pride has had other and important results, so that both friend and foe have served me.... I bow to nothing save that which is _beautiful everywhere and at all times_, and progress to my mind signifies only the fashioning of my works more and more according to this eternal standard. If I do not succeed, therefore, be sure that it is through human helplessness and not intentional profanation." He thus distinctly recognizes his art as a mission, a sacred thing to be reverently handled, and not _profaned_ by compromises with the local and accidental spirit of the age. And again: "If the poet condescends to these intrigues behind the scenes, he loses what should be his greatest treasure: the consciousness of his own dignity.[42] Theatrical plaudits, success, all that is outside ourselves: the poet should seek to live at peace with his own soul, for alas! man cannot fly from himself, and woe to him if he has need to blush for his deeds before the tribunal of his own conscience.... There is too much water in the wine of success to inebriate me.... Time, which is God's mode of action, deprives us little by little of everything which can be salutary guardianship, until that supreme moment when it leaves us face to face with itself alone. Let us strive to prepare ourselves for this awful _tête-à-tête_." Reboul possessed the true pride of a noble heart which consisted in doing simply every duty required of him alike by his poor condition and his admirable talent. Of the former he never showed himself ashamed and repeatedly refused to change it; yet this refusal was perfectly honest. If he was in no ways ashamed of his lowly origin, at the same time he was equally far from making it a boast. On the publication of his _Traditionelles_ (a volume of detached poems) M. Lenormand devoted to it a laudatory and appreciative article in the _Correspondant_. Reboul noticed this in the following words: "I have only one observation to make, however: I would rather they had left the 'baker' out of the question, certainly not because the allusion humiliates me, but because I fear that it points towards making an exception of my verses, as a moral _lusus naturæ_, and it is my ardent wish, on the contrary, to be judged quite outside such circumstances. I can say this the more frankly, because I have never, in my _Traditionelles_, disguised my origin, and indeed, did I not fear to be suspected of that hateful plebeian pride, I should even say that I would not exchange my family for any other. This is between ourselves."