COUNCIL OF THE FIVE-HUNDRED. 69 



out exciting contradiction, that he was always sold, and 

 always for sale would have offered himself to me as 

 the friend, as the ally, or at least as the intimate confi- 

 dant, of the austere, the honest La Revelliere ; I should 

 have seen that same Barras, who already, perhaps, at 

 that epoch, corresponded directly with the Count de 

 Provence, surrounded by a crowd of myrmidons, of 

 whom none, be it said in passing, afterwards refused the 

 imperial livery, upset, by incessant accusations of roy- 

 alty, the only man of our assemblies who, always constant 

 in his convictions, battled foot by foot against the insati- 

 able ambition of Bonaparte. 



Seeking in the sequel by facts, and only by facts, 

 whether the majority of the counsellors was really 

 factious ; whether the counter-revolution could not be 

 avoided but by a coup-d 'etat ; in a word, whether the 

 18th of Fructidor was inevitable, I should have found, 

 and this notwithstanding the mutual concessions which 

 the authors of the proscription no doubt made, as in the 

 time of Octavius, of Lepidus, of Anthony, I should 

 have found an elimination, or, if you will, a filtering of 

 forty-one members only, in the Council of the Five-Hun- 

 dred, and of eleven in the Council of the Elders. 



The thread that could safely guide the historian in 

 this labyrinth of contradictory facts, I repeat it, I have 

 not found. The memoirs snatched from the family of 

 Barras by order of Louis XVIII. ; the memoirs that 

 were left by La Revelliere, and of which it is so desir- 

 able that the public should be no longer deprived ; the 

 confessions which on the other hand, we have a right to 

 expect on the part of some of the victims of the Direc- 

 torial coup-d' etat, may, perhaps, dissipate all the clouds. 

 Would to God, for the honour of the country, that in the 



