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The Trampling of the Lilies by Rafael Sabatini
page 49 of 286 (17%)
impassioned, and although in what he said there was perhaps nothing
that was fresh to the lawyer of Arras, yet the manner in which he
said it was impressive to a degree.

"But Duhamel," he cried to the schoolmaster, "you did not tell me
this young patriot was an orator."

"Nor am I, Monsieur," smiled La Boulaye. "I am but the mouthpiece
of the great Rousseau. I have so assimilated his thoughts that they
come from me as spontaneously as if they were my own, and often I go
so far as to delude myself into believing that they are."

No better recommendation than this could he have had to the attention
of Robespierre, who was himself much in the same case, imbued with
and inspired by those doctrines, so ideal in theory, but, alas! so
difficult, so impossible in practice. For fully an hour they sat
and talked, and each improved in his liking of the other, until at
last, bethinking him of the flight of time, Robespierre announced
that he must start.

"You will take him to Paris with you, Maximilien?" quoth the old
pedagogue.

"Ma foi, yes; and if with such gifts as Nature appears to have given
him, and such cultivation of them as, through the teachings of
Rousseau, he has effected, I do not make something of him, why,
then, I am unworthy of the confidence my good friends of Arras
repose in me."

They made their adieux, and the schoolmaster, opening his door,
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