nts, and offered to be
himself one of those hostages. Nor do we in the least doubt that the
offer was sincere. He would, we firmly believe, have thought himself far
safer at Bordeaux or Marseilles than at Paris. His proposition, however,
was not carried into effect; and he remained in the power of the
victorious Mountain.

This was the great crisis of his life. Hitherto he had done nothing
inexpiable, nothing which marked him out as a much worse man than most
of his colleagues in the Convention. His voice had generally been on the
side of moderate measures. Had he bravely cast in his lot with the
Girondists, and suffered with them, he would, like them, have had a not
dishonorable place in history. Had he like the great body of deputies
who meant well, but who had not the courage to expose themselves to
martyrdom, crouched quietly under the dominion of the triumphant
minority, and suffered every motion of Robespierre and Billaud to pass
unopposed, he would have incurred no peculiar ignominy. But it is
probable that this course was not open to him. He had been too prominent
among the adversaries of the Mountain to be admitted to quarter without
making some atonement. It was necessary that, if he hoped to find pardon
from his new lords, he should not be merely a silent and passive slave.
What passed in private between him and them cannot be accurately
related; but the result was soon apparent. The Committee of Public
Safety was renewed. Several of the fiercest of the dominant faction,
Couthon, for example, and St. Just, were substituted for more moderate
politicians; but Barere was suffered to retain his seat at the Board.

The indulgence with which he was treated excited the murmurs of some
stern and ardent zealots. Marat, in the very last words that he
wrote,--words not published till the dagger of Charlotte Corday had
avenged France and mankind,--complained that a man who had no
principles, who was always on the side of the strongest, who had been a
royalist, and who was ready, in case of a turn of fortune, to be a
royalist again, should be entrusted with an important share in the
administration.[19] But the chiefs of the Mountain judged more
correctly. They knew indeed, as well as Marat, that Barere was a man
utterly without faith or steadiness; that, if he could be said to have
any political leaning, his leaning was not towards them; that he felt
for the Girondist party that faint and wavering sort of preference of