n been repeated. M. Hippolyte Carnot does
not altogether deny the truth of these stories, but justly observes
that Barere's dissipation was not carried to such a point as to
interfere with his industry. Nothing can be more true. Barere was by no
means so much addicted to debauchery as to neglect the work of murder.
It was his boast that, even during his hours of recreation, he cut out
work for the Revolutionary Tribunal. To those who expressed a fear that
his exertions would hurt his health, he gayly answered that he was less
busy than they thought. "The guillotine," he said, "does all; the
guillotine governs." For ourselves, we are much more disposed to look
indulgently on the pleasures which he allowed to himself than on the
pain which he inflicted on his neighbors:--

"Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedisset
Tempora saevitiae, claras quibus abstulit urbi
Illustresque animas, impune ac vindice nullo."

An immoderate appetite for sensual gratifications is undoubtedly a
blemish on the fame of Henry the Fourth, of Lord Somers, of Mr. Fox. But
the vices of honest men are the virtues of Barere.

And now Barere had become a really cruel man. It was from mere
pusillanimity that he had perpetrated his first great crimes. But the
whole history of our race proves that the taste for the misery of others
is a taste which minds not naturally ferocious may too easily acquire,
and which, when once acquired, is as strong as any of the propensities
with which we are born. A very few months had sufficed to bring this man
into a state of mind in which images of despair, wailing, and death had
an exhilarating effect on him, and inspired him as wine and love inspire
men of free and joyous natures. The cart creaking under its daily
freight of victims, ancient men and lads, and fair young girls, the
binding of the hands, the thrusting of the head out of the little
national sash-window, the crash of the axe, the pool of blood beneath
the scaffold, the heads rolling by scores in the panier--these things
were to him what Lalage and a cask of Falernian were to Horace, what
Rosette and a bottle of iced champagne are to De Beranger. As soon as he
began to speak of slaughter his heart seemed to be enlarged, and his
fancy to become unusually fertile of conceits and gasconades.
Robespierre, St. Just, and Billaud, whose barbarity was the effect of
earnest and gloomy hatred, were, in his view, men who made a toil of a
pleasure.