HIS STRICT HONESTY. 107 



show, that Carnot even unintentionally does not reach, if 

 not riches, at least the easy circumstances of those men 

 who, like him, have long held brilliant employments ? 

 Some facts will serve as answers. 



After the 18th Brumaire, at the moment when Carnot 

 became Minister of War, the pay of the troops, and, what 

 must occasion still more surprise, the pay of the clerks, 

 was fifteen months in arrear. A few weeks elapsed and 

 all was paid up ; all, except the salary of the Minister 

 himself ! 



Pins, was the name given to a sort of gratuity destined 

 in appearance for the wife of any one with whom a farmer, 

 a merchant, or a commissary had concluded a contract, 

 whether public or private. Although pins did not appear 

 in the written conditions, the contracting parties did not 

 therefore regard them as less obligatory ; habit, that sec- 

 ond nature, had at last come to acknowledge them as 

 legal ; the most sensitive consciences satisfied themselves 

 by not fixing their amount. 



A horse-dealer, whose offer Carnot had approved, was 

 going, according to custom, to bring him a considerable 

 sum, under the name of pins ; it was, I believe, 50,000 

 francs. The Minister, at first, does not understand. At 

 the Committee of Public Safety, where he had served his 

 apprenticeship, the purveyors took good care not to speak 

 of pins. All is explained at last, and Carnot, far from 

 being angry, receives with a laugh the notes that are pre- 

 sented to him ; he receives them with one hand, and gives 

 them back with the other, as a first instalment of the 

 price of the horses that the dealer had agreed to furnish 

 for our cavalry, and demands an immediate receipt. 



In the most violent paroxysms of their fury, the fac- 

 tions had the prudence not to attack Carnot as a private 



