such a wretch. The election was declared null on the ground
that the person elected was a criminal skulking from justice; and many
severe reflections were thrown on the lenity which suffered him to be
still at large.

He tried to make his peace with the Directory, by writing a bulky libel
on England, entitled, The Liberty of the Seas. He seems to have
confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He
printed three thousand copies, and, in order to defray the expense of
publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten thousand francs.
The book came out; but nobody bought it, in consequence, if Barere is to
be believed, of the villainy of Mr. Pitt, who bribed the Directory to
order the reviewers not to notice so formidable an attack on the
maritime greatness of perfidious Albion.

Barere had been about three years at Bordeaux when he received
intelligence that the mob of the town designed him the honor of a visit
on the ninth of Thermidor, and would probably administer to him what he
had, in his defence of his friend Lebon, described as substantial
justice under forms a little harsh. It was necessary for him to disguise
himself in clothes such as were worn by the carpenters of the dock. In
this garb, with a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he made his
escape into the vineyards which surround the city, lurked during some
days in a peasant's hut, and, when the dreaded anniversary was over,
stole back into the city. A few months later he was again in danger. He
now thought that he should be nowhere so safe as in the neighborhood of
Paris. He quitted Bordeaux, hastened undetected through those towns
where four years before his life had been in extreme danger, passed
through the capital in the morning twilight, when none were in the
streets except shopboys taking down the shutters, and arrived safe at
the pleasant village of St. Ouen on the Seine. Here he remained in
seclusion during some months. In the meantime Bonaparte returned from
Egypt, placed himself at the head of a coalition of discontented
parties, covered his designs with the authority of the Elders, drove the
Five Hundred out of their hall at the point of the bayonet, and became
absolute monarch of France under the name of First Consul.

Barere assures us that these events almost broke his heart; that he
could not bear to see France again subject to a master; and that, if the
representatives had been worthy of that honorable name, t