He seems almost
to have been sent into the world to prove the inefficacy of human reason
to effect human happiness. He was gifted with a power over common
temptation, which belongs to but few. His blood was cool and temperate,
and yet his heart was open to all the softer emotions. He had no
appetite for luxury; no desire for pomp; no craving for wealth. Among
thousands who were revelling in sensuality, he kept himself pure and
immaculate. If any man could have said, I will be virtuous; I, of
myself, unaided, trusting to my own power, guarding myself by the light
of my own reason; I will walk uprightly through the world, and will shed
light from my path upon my brethren, he might have said so. He attempted
it, and history shows us the result. He attempted, unassisted, to be
perfect among men, and his memory is regarded as that of a loathsome
plague, defiling even the unclean age in which he lived.
At about five o'clock in the afternoon on an October day, in 1793,
Robespierre was sitting alone in a small room in the house of his
friend, Simon Duplay, the cabinet-maker.
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