ESCAPE OF THE REPUBLICAN EXILES. 101 



extremities, it is the same thing whether we commit 

 ourselves a little more or a little less ! " 



The Councils were not abolished, for they would 

 work more usefully as tools of the Directory under 

 their old name, but they were purified. Every man 

 who dared to raise his voice was picked out, thrown 

 into prison, or frightened into flight. The prisoners 

 next came under the directorial consideration. The 

 republican regime was, that they should be shot ; the 

 popular cry was, that they should afford the city of 

 Paris a holiday, by having their heads cut off on the 

 scaffold. But the taste of " the free " was thwarted 

 on this occasion. Even in France experience had 

 not thrown away all her lessons. The Directory had 

 been too close to downfall, to lose the sense of what 

 they might be within the next month, or the next 

 minute. The guillotine was a hazardous instrument 

 to be once more set in play for political mistakes ; 

 and the imprisoned deputies, to save the necks of the 

 Directory, were sentenced only to be transported, to 

 die out of sight in one of the most pestilential spots of 

 the "Western World, the French colony of Cayenne. 



At this time the command of the Temple was in 

 hands worthy of the government and of the time 

 a galley-slave, who had returned from the galleys 

 a month before, where he had been sentenced for 

 robbery, assassination, and setting fire to houses in 

 one of the departments. From day to day additions 

 were made to the party, and they were at length 



