COUNCIL OF THE FIVE-HDNDRED. 69 



out exciting contradiction, that he was always sold, and 

 always for sale — would have oftered 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' itat ; 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 XVIIL ; 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 covp-(Vkat, may, perhaps, dissii)ate all the clouds. 

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



