e the hopes of the aristocracy. "Whoever," he said,
"is nobly born is a man to be suspected. Every priest, every frequenter
of the old court, every lawyer, every banker, is a man to be suspected.
Every person who grumbles at the course which the Revolution takes is a
man to be suspected. There are whole castes already tried and condemned.
There are callings which carry their doom with them. There are relations
of blood which the law regards with an evil eye. Republicans of
France!" yelled the renegade Girondist, the old enemy of the
Mountain--"Republicans of France! the Brissotines led you by gentle
means to slavery. The Mountain leads you by strong measures to freedom.
Oh! who can count the evils which a false compassion may produce?"
When the friends of Danton mustered courage to express a wish that the
Convention would at least hear him in his own defence before it sent him
to certain death, the voice of Barere was the loudest in opposition to
their prayer. When the crimes of Lebon, one of the worst, if not the
very worst, of the viceregents of the Committee of Public Safety, had so
maddened the people of the Department of the North that they resorted to
the desperate expedient of imploring the protection of the Convention,
Barere pleaded the cause of the accused tyrant, and threatened the
petitioners with the utmost vengeance of the government. "These
charges," he said, "have been suggested by wily aristocrats. The man who
crushes the enemies of the people, though he may be hurried by his
zeal into some excesses, can never be a proper object of censure. The
proceedings of Lebon may have been a little harsh as to form." One of
the small irregularities thus gently censured was this: Lebon kept a
wretched man a quarter of an hour under the knife of the guillotine,
in order to torment him, by reading to him, before he was despatched,
a letter, the contents of which were supposed to be such as would
aggravate even the bitterness of death. "But what," proceeded Barere,
"is not permitted to the hatred of a republican against aristocracy? How
many generous sentiments atone for what may perhaps seem acrimonious in
the prosecution of public enemies? Revolutionary measures are always
to be spoken of with respect. Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is not
lawful to lift."

After this, it would be idle to dwell on facts which would indeed,
of themselves, suffice to render a name infamous, but which make no
perceptible addition to