#speechact

The only deduction I could draw was that, in politics, it was a mark of superiority rather than inferiority to repeat what everybody else thought. Each time M. de Norpois used certain expressions, which were as trite as the newspapers in which he read them, and which he spoke with emphasis, one could sense that, by virtue of having been uttered by him, they became an act, and that this act would not go unnoticed.