o 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 four or five
great cities had attempted to tear him limb from limb. Nor were his
vices redeemed by eminent talents for administration or legislation. It
would be unwise to place in any honorable or important post a man so
wicked, so odious, and so little qualified to discharge high political
duties. At the same time, there was a way in which it seemed likely that
he might be of use to the government. The First Consul, as he afterwards
acknowledged, greatly overrated Barere's powers as a writer. The effect
which the Reports of the Committee of Public Safety had produced by the
camp fires of the Republican armies had been great. Napoleon himself,
when a young soldier, had been delighted by those compositions, which
had much in common with the rhapsodies of his favorite poet, Macpherson.
The taste, indeed, of the great warrior and statesman was never very
pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and his proclamations, are
sometimes, it is true, masterpieces in their kind; but we too often
detect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and of the
Carmagnoles. It is not strange, therefore, that he should have been
desirous to secure the aid of Barere's pen. Nor was this the only kind
of assistance which the old member of the Committee of Public Safety
might render to the Consular government. He was likely to find admission
into the gloomy dens in which those Jacobins whose constancy was to be
overcome by no reverse, or whose crimes admitted of no expiation, hid
themselves from the curses of mankind. No enterprise was too bold or too
atrocious for minds crazed by fanaticism, and familiar with misery and
death. The government was anxious to have information of what passed in
their secret councils; and no man was better qualified to furnish such
information than Barere.

For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barere as a
writer and as a spy. But Barere--was it possible that he would submit to
such a degradation? Bad as he was, he had played a great part. He had