ething in
common with the Jacobin, and something in common with the Royalist.
All, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who were disposed to support his
government, were readily received--all, whether Jacobins or Royalists,
who showed hostility to his government, were put down and punished. Men
who had borne a part in the worst crimes of the Reign of Terror, and men
who had fought in the army of Conde, were to be found close together,
both in his antechambers and in his dungeons. He decorated Fouche and
Maury with the same cross. He sent Arena and Georges Cadoudal to the
same scaffold. From a government acting on such principles Barere easily
obtained the indulgence which the Directory had constantly refused to
grant. The sentence passed by the Convention was remitted; and he was
allowed to reside at Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in
the most honourable form; and he remained, during some time, under the
special supervision of the police. He hastened, however, to pay his
court at the Luxembourg palace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was
honoured with a few dry and careless words by the master of France.

Here begins a new chapter of Barere's history. What passed between him
and the Consular government cannot, of course, be so accurately known to
us as the speeches and reports which he made in the Convention. It is,
however, not difficult, from notorious facts, and from the admissions
scattered over these lying Memoirs, to form a tolerably accurate notion
of what took place. Bonaparte wanted to buy Barere: Barere wanted to
sell himself to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; and there
was an immense interval between what was offered and what was demanded.

Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance
on his own genius were not only great but extravagant, looked with
scorn on the most effeminate and dependent of human minds. He was quite
capable of perpetrating crimes under the influence either of ambition or
of revenge: but he had no touch of that accursed monomania, that craving
for blood and tears, which raged in some of the Jacobin chiefs. To
proscribe the Terrorists would have been wholly inconsistent with his
policy; but, of all the classes of men whom his comprehensive system
included, he liked them the least; and Barere was the worst of them.
This wretch had been branded with infamy, first by the Convention, and
then by the Council of Five Hundred. The inhabitants of