extravagance. France had become the arbitress of so many states, great and small, that many princes were glad to seek her favour, and to pay large sums for the promise of a voice in the Directory. We shall see by and by what was attempted in this way. The display which Barras made might not in itself have been useless, for the chiefs of a state ought to associate much with men, in order to study them, to learn their characters, and to make a proper choice of them; but he surrounded himself not only with men of business, but with intriguers of all sorts, dissolute women, and rogues. A scandalous grossness prevailed in his saloons. Those clandestine connexions, over which, in wellregulated society, people strive to throw a veil, were publicly avowed. His visiters went to Gros-Bois to indulge in orgies, which furnished the enemies of the republic with powerful arguments against the government. Barras himself was not anxious to conceal any part of his conduct, and, according to the custom of debauchees, he was fond of proclaiming his excesses. He would himself relate before his colleagues his exploits at GrosBois and the Luxembourg, for which they sometimes severely reproached him. He would tell them how he had forced a celebrated contractor of that day to take a mistress of whom he began to be tired, and whose extravagance he could no longer supply; how he had revenged himself upon the Abbé Poincelin, a newspaper writer, for some personal invectives against him; and how, after enticing him to the Luxembourg, he had made his servants give him a flogging. This conduct, such as one would expect from an ill-bred prince, was in a republic extremely prejudicial to the Directory, and would have deprived it of all respect, had not the high reputation and the virtues of Carnot and Lareveillère counterbalanced the ill effect of the excesses of Barras.

The Directory, instituted the day after the 13th of Vendémiaire, formed in hatred of counter-revolution, composed of regicides, and furiously attacked by the royalists, could not but be warmly republican. But each of its members participated more or less in the opinions that divided France. Lareveillère and Rewbel possessed that moderate but rigid republicanism, which was as adverse to the violent proceedings of 1793 as to the royalist excesses of 1795. To gain them over to the counter-revolution was impossible. The unerring instinct of the parties taught them that from such men nothing was to be obtained either by seductions or by newspaper flatteries. Accordingly, they had nothing but the severest censure to bestow on those two directors. As for Barras and Carnot, they were in a different predicament. Barras, though he met every body, was in reality an ardent revolutionist. The faubourgs held him in high esteem, and had not forgotten that he had been the general of Vendé miaire. The conspirators of the camp of Grenelle had reckoned

upon him. Accordingly, the patriots loaded him with praise; and the royalists, for the same reason overwhelmed him with invectives. Some secret agents of royalism, brought in contact with him by a common spirit of intrigue, might indeed, calculating upon his depravity, conceive some hopes; but this was an opinion which they kept to themselves. The mass of the party abhorred and attacked him with fury.

Carnot, ex-Mountaineer, formerly member of the committee of public welfare, and who after the 9th of Thermidor had well nigh fallen a victim to the royalist reaction, ought certainly to be a decided republican, and he really was so. At the first moment of his entrance into the Directory, he had strongly supported the appointment of all persons selected from among the Mountaineer party; but, by degrees, in proportion as the terrors of Vendémiaire subsided, his dispositions had changed. Carnot, even in the committee of public welfare, had never liked the herd of the turbulent revolutionists, and had powerfully contributed to destroy the Hebertists. On seeing Barras, who was anxious to continue king of the canaille, surround himself with the relics of the Jacobin party, he had become hostile to that party; he had displayed great energy in the affair of the camp of Grenelle, and so much the more as Barras was compromised in that rash attempt. Nor was this all. Carnot was annoyed by recollections. The charge preferred against him of having signed the most sanguinary acts of the committee of public welfare tormented him. In his estimation, the very natural explanations which he had given were not sufficient; he would have wished to prove by all means that he was not a monster; and he was capable of many sacrifices to prove this. Parties know every thing, guess every thing; they are not difficult in regard to persons, unless when they are victorious; but, when they are vanquished, they recruit themselves in all possible ways and are particularly careful to flatter the chiefs of armies. The royalists were soon aware of Carnot's dispositions in regard to Barras and the patriot party. They had discovered his anxiety to reinstate himself in the good opinion of the public; they were aware of his military importance, and they took care to treat him differently from his colleagues, and to speak of him in the manner which they knew to be most likely to touch him. Hence, while the herd of their journals had nothing but gross abuse for Barras, Lareveillère, and Rewbel, they had nothing but praise for the ex-Mountaineer and regicide, Carnot. gaining Carnot, they would have Letourneur, and thus they should make sure of two voices by a vulgar artifice, but a potent one, like all those which address themselves to self-love. not had the weakness to yield to this kind of seduction; and, without ceasing to follow his internal convictions, he formed with his friend Letourneur a kind of opposition in the Directory,

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somewhat like that which the new third formed in the two Councils. On all questions, in fact, on which the Directory had to deliberate, he pronounced in favour of the opinion adopted by the opposition. Thus, on all questions relative to peace and war, he voted for peace, after the example of the opposition, which affected continually to demand it. He had strongly recommended that the greatest sacrifices should be made to the emperor, and that peace should be signed with Naples and Rome, without insisting on too rigorous conditions.

No sooner have such discordances broken out than they make rapid progress. The party desirous of profiting by them bestows the most extravagant praise on those whom it wishes to gain, and pours a torrent of censure on the others. These tactics had been attended with their usual success. Barras and Rewbel, already enemies to Carnot, hated him still more for the praise which was lavished upon him, and imputed to him the severity with which they were themselves attacked. Lareveillère strove in vain to appease these animosities; but discord nevertheless made baneful progress. The public, apprized of what was passing, divided the Directory into majority and minority, classing Lareveillère, Rewbel, and Barras, in the former, and Carnot and Letourneur in the latter.

The ministers also were classed. As people made a point of finding fault with the direction of the finances, they fell foul of Ramel, the minister, an excellent public functionary, who was obliged by the distressed state of the exchequer to resort to expedients censurable at any other time, but inevitable under the existing circumstances. The taxes came in but slowly, owing to the terrible irregularities in the collection. It had been found necessary to reduce the land-tax, and the indirect contributions yielded much less than had been expected. There were frequently no funds whatever in the Exchequer; and, in these emergencies, the funds of the ordinary expenses, were taken to defray those which were extraordinary, or the government anticipated the receipts, and made all the absurd and onerous bargains to which situations of this kind give rise. An outcry against abuses and peculations was then raised, whereas, on the contrary, it was the government that needed assistance. Ramel, who performed the duties of his office with equal integrity and intelligence, was the butt of every attack, and was treated as an enemy by all the newspapers. It was the same with Truguet, the minister of the marine, well known as a frank republican, as a friend of Hoche's, as a supporter of all the patriot officers; the eame with Delacroix, the minister for foreign affairs, capable of forming a good administrator, but a bad diplomatist, too pedantic, and too rude in his intercourse with the ministers of foreign powers; the same with Merlin, who, in his administration of justice, displayed all the fervour of a Mountaineer republican. As for Benezech, Petiet,

and Cochon, the ministers of the interior, of war, and of the police, they were classed entirely by themselves. Benezech had sustained so many attacks from the Jacobins for having proposed to restore a free trade in articles of consumption, and to cease to supply Paris with provisions, that he had become agreeable on account of them to the counter-revolutionary party. An able public functionary, but trained under the old system, the overthrow of which he regretted, he partly deserved the favour of those who praised him. Petiet, minister at war, acquitted himself ably of his functions; but being a creature of Carnot's, he shared precisely the same fate as the latter with the contending parties. As for Cochon, he was also recommended by his connexion with Carnot, and since the discovery which he had made of the plots of the Jacobins, and the zeal which he had shown in prosecuting them, he had won the favour of the opposite party, which praised him with affectation.

Notwithstanding these disagreements, the government was still sufficiently united to rule with vigour, and to prosecute with glory its operations against the powers of Europe. The opposition was still repressed by the conventional majority remaining in the legislative body. The elections, however, were approaching, and the moment was at hand when a new third, chosen under the influence of the moment, would succeed another conventional third. The opposition flattered itself that it would then acquire the majority, and emerge from the state of submission in which it had lived. Accordingly, its language in the two councils became more lofty, and it betrayed its hopes. The members composing this minority met at Tivoli, to discuss their plans, and to concert their measures. This meeting of deputies had become a most violent club, known by the name of the club of Clichy. The journals participated in this movement. A great number of young men, who, under the old system would have composed scraps of poetry, declaimed, through fifty or sixty leaves, against the excesses of the Revolution and against the Convention to which they imputed those excesses. They were not finding fault, they said, with the republic, but with those who had imbrued its cradle in blood. The assemblies of electors were forming beforehand, and such were the means employed to influence their choice. In every thing the language, the spirit, and the passions of Vendémiaire were manifested: the same sincerity and the same credulity in the mass, the same ambition in certain individuals, the same perfidy in certain conspirators labouring clandestinely in favour of royalty.

This royalist faction, always beaten, but always credulous and intriguing, was incessantly raising its head again. Wherever there is a pretension backed by some succour in money, there will be found intriguers ready to serve it by miserable projects. Though Lemaître had been condemned to death, La Vendée quelled, Pichegru deprived of the command of the army of the

Rhine, the intrigues of the counter-revolution had not ceased: they were prosecuted on the contrary with extreme activity. The situations of all the royalist party were singularly changed. The Pretender, called by turns Count de Lille and Louis XVIII., had left Venice, as we have seen, to proceed to the army of the Rhine. He had stopped for a moment in the camp of the Prince of Condé, where an accident placed his life in jeopardy. Standing at a window, he was fired at and slightly grazed by the ball. This attempt, the author of which remained unknown, could not fail to be attributed to the Directory, which was not silly enough to pay for a crime that would have been profitable to the Count d'Artois alone. The Pretender did not stay long with the Prince of Condé. His presence in the Austrian army was disapproved of by the cabinet of Vienna, which had refused to recognise him, and was aware that his presence would only serve to aggravate the quarrel with Francea quarrel already too sanguinary and too expensive. An intimation was given him to depart, and on his refusal, a detachment was sent to enforce his compliance. He then retired to Blankenburg, where he continued to be the centre of all the correspondence. The Count d'Artois, after his vain schemes respecting La Vendée, had retired to Scotland, whence he still corresponded with some intriguers, going to and fro between La Vendée and England.

Lemaître being dead, his associates had taken his place, and succeeded him in the confidence of the Pretender. These were, as we have already seen, the Abbé Brottier, once a schoolmaster, Laville-Heurnois, formerly a master of requests, a Chevalier Despomelles, and a naval officer named Duverne de Presle.* The old system of these agents, stationed in Paris, was to do every thing by the intrigues of the capital, while the Vendeans pretended to accomplish every thing by armed insurrection, and the Prince of Condé by means of Pichegru. La Vendée being subdued, Pichegru doomed to retirement, and a threatening reaction breaking out against the Revolution, the Paris agents were the more fully persuaded that they ought to expect every thing from a spontaneous movement of the interior. To control the elections, then by the elections to control the councils, by the councils the Directory and the high offices, seemed to them a sure way to re-establish royalty with the very means furnished them by the republic. For this purpose, however, it was necessary to put an end to that divergence of ideas which had always been seen in the plans of counter-revolution. Puisaye,

*"Duverne-de-Presle, a naval officer, was denounced by Malo the chief of a squadron, as one of the contrivers of a royalist conspiracy, at the head of which was Laville-Heurnois. He was in consequence brought before the Directory, and condemned to death with a commutation of his punishment for ten years' imprisonment. He afterwards purchased his pardon by turning evidence against the persons accused with him."-Biographie Moderne. E.