The fall of Danton left Robespierre by far the most conspicuous man in France. For character and reputation he had no rival in the Committees, and it was largely on his popularity that the Government rested for support. In some points Robespierre compared favourably with his colleagues. His life was frugal, pure and decent. His dress was always neat. His sense of decorum never deserted him. His devotion to his principles and his hatred of license and irreverence were sincere. He represented admirably the complacent Philistinism of a certain type of French bourgeois. His language breathed of virtue and emotion. His long-winded, didactic generalities, his perpetual appeals to morality and conscience imposed on well-intentioned, narrow minds, and, no doubt, imposed upon his own. Robespierre's followers, women especially, with whom his influence was great, took him at his own valuation. They did not discover his amazing egotism. They did not resent the qualities which make him appear to us the typical prig of history. They liked the long abstract discourses, which were the fashion of his time and sect. They liked his plain respectability. They liked his war upon corruption. They liked his feeling for religion and his copious sentiment. They were charmed by his high-sounding and unpractical ideals. They marvelled when he recited, as he never tired of doing, the tale of his own virtues. Robespierre was essentially a priest, and he exercised a priest's fascination, preaching unceasingly and claiming without scruple the admiration of his flock. 'I have never bowed,' he cried, 'beneath the yoke of baseness and corruption.' 'Surrounded by assassins, I have little to reconcile me to life except my love for my country and my thirst for justice.' 'I am a living martyr to the Republic, at once the victim and the enemy of crime.' 'If such truths must be dissembled, then bring me the hemlock.' He was for ever proclaiming himself the champion of morality, for ever protesting his readiness to die in its cause. He reiterated it so often, and he believed it so intensely, that he made his followers believe it too.