compromising friendship: "I thought him sincere,"
says he of the younger Robespierre, in a letter intended to be shown,
"but were he my father and had aimed at tyranny, I would have stabbed
him myself." On returning to Paris, after having knocked at several
doors, he takes Barras for a patron. Barras, the most brazen of the
corrupt, Barras, who has overthrown and contrived the death of his two
former protectors.[1127] Among the contending parties and fanaticisms
which succeed each other he keeps cool and free to dispose of himself as
he pleases, indifferent to every cause and concerning himself only
with his own interests.--On the evening of the 12th of Vendemiaire,
on leaving the Feydeau theatre, and noticing the preparations of the
sectionists,[1128] he said to Junot:

"Ah, if the sections put me in command, I would guarantee to place them
in the Tuileries in two hours and have all those Convention rascals
driven out!"

Five hours later, summoned by Barras and the Conventionalists, he takes
"three minutes" to make up his mind, and, instead of "blowing up the
representatives," he mows down the Parisians. Like a good condottiere,
he does not commit himself, considers the first that offers and then
the one who offers the most, only to back out afterwards, and finally,
seizing the opportunity, to grab everything.--He will more and
more become a true condottiere, that is to say, leader of a band,
increasingly independent, pretending to submit under the pretext of
the public good, looking out only for his own interest, self-centered,
general on his own account and for his own advantage in his Italian
campaign before and after the 18th of Fructidor.[1129] He is, however,
a condottiere of the first class, already aspiring to the loftiest
summits, "with no stopping-place but the throne or the scaffold,"[1130]
"determined[1131] to master France, and through France Europe. Without
distraction, sleeping only three hours during the night," he plays
with ideas, men, religions, and governments, exploiting people with
incomparable dexterity and brutality. He is, in the choice of means
as of ends, a superior artist, inexhaustible in glamour, seductions,
corruption, and intimidation, fascinating, and yet more terrible than
any wild beast suddenly released among a herd of browsing cattle. The
expression is not too strong and was uttered by an eye-witness, almost
at this very date, a friend and a competent diplomat: "You know that,
wh