[Footnote 31103: Fievée, "correspondance" (introduction). Fievée, who heard him at the Jacobin Club, said that he resembled a "tailor of the ancient regime." La Réeveillère-Lepeaux, ´"Memoires."--Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 94.--Malouet, "Mémoires," II., 135. (Session of May 31, 1791, after the delivery of Abbé Raynal's address.) "This is the first and only time I found Robespierre clear and even eloquent.... He spun out his opening phrases as usual, which contained the spirit of his discourse, and which, in spite of his accustomed rigmarole, produced the effect he intended."] [Footnote 31104: Courrier de Provence, III., No. 52, (Oct. 7 and 8, 1789).--Buchez et Roux, VI., 372. (Session of July 10, 1790.) Another similar blunder was committed by him on the occasion of an American deputation. The president had made his response, which was "unanimously applauded." Robespierre wanted to have his say notwithstanding the objections of the Assembly, impatient at his verbiage, and which finally put him down. Amidst the laughter, "M. l'Abbé Maury demands ironically the printing of M. Robespierre's discourse."] [Footnote 31105: L. Villiers, 2.] [Footnote 31106: Cf. his principal speeches in the constituent Assembly;--against martial law; against the veto, even suspensive; against the qualification of the silver marc and in favor of universal suffrage; in favor of admitting into the National Guard non-acting citizens; of the marriage of priests; of the abolition of the death penalty; of granting political rights to colored men; of interdicting the father from favoring any one of his children; of declaring the "Constituants" ineligible to the Legislative Assembly, etc. On royalty: "The King is not the representative but the clerk of the nation." On the danger of allowing political rights to colored men: "Let the colonies perish if they cost you your honor, your glory, your liberty!"] [Footnote 31107: Hamel, I., 76.77, (March, 1789). "My heart is an honest one and I stand firm; I have never bowed beneath the yoke of baseness and corruption." He enumerates the virtues that a representative of the Third Estate should possess (26, 83). He already shows his blubbering capacity and his disposition to regard himself as a victim: "They undertake making martyrs of the people's defenders. Had they the power to deprive me of the advantages they envy, could they snatch from me my soul and the consciousness of the benefits I desire to confer on them."] [Footnote 31108: Buchez et Roux, XXXIII. "Who am I that am thus accused? The slave of freedom, a living martyr to the Republic, at once the victim and the enemy of crime!" See this speech in full.] [Footnote 31109: Especially in his address to the French people, (Aug., 1791), which, in a justificatory form, is his apotheosis.--Cf. Hamel, II., 212; Speech in the Jacobin club, (April 27, 1792).] [Footnote 31110: Hamel, I., 517, 532, 559; II., 5.]