voir

comment on meurt pour vingt-cinq francs). Gambetta brought himself into notice in 1868, by defending certain opposition journals which were prosecuted for opening subscription-lists for a monument to Baudin.

Barbaroux spoke with the extravagance of the revolutionists to the electoral assembly of the Bouches du Rhône, Sept. 3, 1792 : "Mine is the soul of a free man; ever since my fourth year it has been nourished on hatred to kings." He used brave words when they were dangerous, of the Jacobins in 1793: “You may compel me to sink under their daggers: you shall not make me fall at their feet;" and after the arrest of the Girondists, with whom he had acted, he refused military protection, saying, "I require no bayonets to defend the liberty of my thoughts."

BERTRAND BARÈRE.

[Called the "Anacreon of the guillotine," on account of the flowery style with which he adorned the most atrocious measures of the Reign of Terror; born 1755; deputy to the States-General; voted in the Convention for the death of the king; moved the condemnation of Robespierre; banished 1806; returned to France, 1830; died miserably, 1841.] Only the dead return not (Il n'y a que les morts qui ne reviennent pas).

A pun on reviennent, to return, or to stalk as a ghost; and so, sarcastically, "Only dead men's ghosts do not walk." In the Convention, 1794. The entire sentence is: "If a year ago the English soldiers had been refused pardon, which they begged on their knees; if our troops had destroyed them, one and all, instead of allowing them to disturb our fortresses, the British government would not this year have renewed its attack upon our frontiers. It is only the dead who do not return." Napoleon used the expression in regard to himself, on the 17th July and 12th December, 1816.-O'MEARA: Napoleon in Exile.

To Barère are due some of the most bloodthirsty utterances of this bloody epoch. He declared in the Convention, in 1792, "The tree of liberty only grows when watered by the blood of tyrants" (L'arbre de la liberté ne croît qu'arrosé par le sang des tyrans). He said to Robespierre and other Jacobins at dinner

what Saint-Just repeated in public in 1794, "The ship of the revolution can only arrive in port on water red with blood" (sur une mer rougie de flots de sang). When it was feared that his exertions in the Reign of Terror would injure his health, he replied that he was less busy than they supposed. "The guillotine governs," he coolly adds. He called the executioner's cart, or the tumbril which carried the condemned from prison to the scaffold, "the bier of the living."

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Barère asserted in the Convention that revolutionary measures should be spoken of with respect : 'Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is not lawful to lift."

One of his expressions was calculated to flatter the vanity of the Jacobins: "You are called upon to remake history (Vous êtes appelés à recommencer l'histoire).—MARTIN: Histoire de France, XVI. end.

ANTOINE BARNAVE.

[A politician of the French Revolution; born at Grenoble, 1761; elected to the States-General, 1789; appointed to attend the royal family on their return from the flight to Varennes, and became from that time a defender of the throne; retired at the close of the Assembly, 1791; executed, November, 1793.]

Was the blood which has just been shed so pure? (Le sang qui vient de se répandre, était-il donc si pur?)

"The inexcusable and fatal expression," says Sainte-Beuve, "which cost him his entire life, and at last his death, to obliterate;" called forth in reply to a denunciation of the murder of the intendants, Foulon and Bartier, who were hanged to lamp-posts by the mob in 1790. Of Foulon, who had been appointed minister, accounts vary; sympathizers with the revolution calling him harsh and exacting, while Taine ("French Revolution") pronounces him a strict master, but intelligent and useful, who expended sixty thousand francs the winter before his death in giving employment to the poor. On the day of Barnave's execution, two men placed themselves opposite the cart in the courtyard of the Palace of Justice; when he appeared, they jeeringly applied to him his own words, " Barnave, is the blood that is about to flow so pure?"

Perish the colonies, rather than a principle!

In the Constituent Assembly, May 7, 1791, upon a proposition to give colonial legislatures composed of whites the initiative of legislation concerning persons. Dupont de Nemours, replying to those who maintained that the colonies would be lost without distinction of caste, exclaimed, "Better sacrifice the colonies than a principle!" and Robespierre added, "Perish the colonies, if they wish to force us to decree according to their interests!" From these two phrases Barnave formed the more compact one, "Périssent les colonies plutôt qu'un principe!”

Of the many forms of this expression, perhaps the earliest may be found in Corneille's "Rodogune," 1648, -"Let the sky fall, so that I be avenged!" (Tombe que moi le ciel, pourvu que je me renge!) Danton exclaimed, "Perish my reputation, rather than my country!" ("Périsse ma réputation, plutôt que ma patrie) Vergniaud was probably more sincere, in the Convention, 1792, "Perish our memory, but let France be free!" (Périsse notre mémoire, pourvu que la France soit libre!)

George Hardinge uttered a similar expression in the House of Commons, during a debate on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill, March 22, 1793: "Perish commerce, let the constitution live!"

Take courage, madame: it is true that our banner is torn, but the word "Constitution" is still legible thereon.

To Marie Antoinette on the return from Varennes, 1791. The queen said of Barnave on this occasion, "If ever power is again in our hands, pardon is already written in our hearts; " again she declared, "I will place myself between Barnave and the executioner, but Lafayette I never can forgive." Her daughter, the Duchess d'Angoulême, thought that if the queen could have overcome her prejudice against Lafayette, and had shown him greater confidence, the royal family would not have perished. The queen considered him a traitor to the court and to his caste. "Better perish," she once exclaimed, "than owe our lives to Lafayette and the constitutional party!"

The last words of Barnave, on the scaffold, "stamping with

his foot, and looking upward," were, "This, then, was my reward!"

Mirabeau declared of Barnave, when, as Dumont says, he was satisfied with him, certainly before their great struggle over the king's veto, "He is a tree, growing to become some day the mast of a line-of-battle ship." — Recollections of Mirabeau.

ISAAC BARRÉ.

[An English soldier and politician, born 1726; served in Canada under Wolfe; entered Parliament, 1761; opposed North's administration; privy councillor, 1766; died 1802.]

They planted by your care! No, your oppression planted them in America.

In reply to Charles Townshend, February, 1765, who asked if colonies planted by British care would grudge taxation.

JEAN BART.

[A French naval commander, born 1651; distinguished himself as a privateersman; appointed by Louis XIV. chief of squadron, 1697; died 1702.]

I learned to smoke in the king's service: he will not take offence at it.

His reply to the courtiers, who expressed their surprise at seeing him light his pipe in the waiting-room at Versailles. When the king told him of his appointment to the command of the fleet, he exclaimed, "Well done, your majesty!" (Vous avez bien fait, votre majesté!) To show his contempt of their comments upon the sailor's uncouth manners, the king said to his courtiers, "No doubt Jean Bart does not talk like you, but who of you could act like Jean Bart?"

BARON DE BASSOMPIERRE.

[François de Bassompierre, Marquis d'Harouel, born in Lorraine, 1579; distinguished himself at the court of Henry IV., who appointed him colonel-general of the Swiss Guards; made marshal of France

by Louis XIII.; imprisoned in the Bastille by Richelieu, 1631; released on the cardinal's death, 1642; died 1646.]

I am looking for a passage which I do not find.

During his long imprisonment in the Bastille, his secretary found him on one occasion reading the Bible, and asked him what he was looking for. "A passage I do not find,” he replied (Je cherche un passage que je ne saurais trouver), meaning a passage out of the Bastille.

When the Prince of Condé and his brother were sent to the same prison by Mazarin in 1650, they were asked what books they would like to have brought to them. The Prince de Conti requested the "Imitation of Jesus Christ," by Thomas à Kempis. Condé said he should prefer the imitation of the Duc de Beaufort, who had recently escaped from the Bastille.

ANSELME BATBIE.

[A French politician, born 1828; member of the National Assembly and Senate; Minister of Public Instruction, Worship, and Fine Arts, 1873.]

We must organize against the progress of revolutionary barbarism a government of combat.

The expression un gouvernement de combat, which M. Batbie used in a parliamentary report, November, 1872, during the presidency of Thiers, became the watchword and counter-watchword of the conservative and republican parties during the parliamentary struggle which ended in the overthrow of the monarchical combination by the elections of 1877.

CHEVALIER BAYARD.

[Pierre de Terrail, the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, born 1475; accompanied Charles VIII. and Louis XII. in their Italian wars; having assumed command of the French army against the Imperialists, was mortally wounded at Ivrea, while effecting a retreat, and died on the field, 1524.]

Glorious sword.

Francis I. of France insisted that the honor of knighthood, which had never been conferred upon him, should be given