romises and seductions,[5183] arresting the electors
and presidents of the primary assemblies," even pouncing on refractory
Jacobins, invalidating the returns of a majority when not satisfactory
to them, and rendering the choice of a minority valid, if it suited
them, in short, constituting itself the chief elector of all local
and central authorities.--Finally, all institutions, laws, public and
private rights, are down, and the nation, body and soul, again becomes,
as under Robespierre, the property of its rulers with this sole
difference, that the kings of Terror, postponing their constitution,
openly proclaim their omnipotence, whilst the others hypocritically rule
under a constitution which they have themselves destroyed, and reign by
virtue of a title which interdicts royalty to them.

They, too, maintain themselves by Terror; only, like so many Tartuffes,
they are not disposed to act openly as executioners. The Directory, heir
to the Convention, affects to repudiate its inheritance: "Woe," says
Boulay de la Meurthe, "to whoever would re-establish scaffolds." There
is to be no guillotine; its purveyors have been too strongly denounced;
they stand too near the red stream and view with too great nervous
horror those who fed it. It is better to employ death at a distance,
lingering and spontaneous, with no effusion of human blood, "dry," less
repulsive than the other sort, but more painful and not less certain;
this shall be imprisonment on the marshes of Rochefort, and, better
still, transportation to the feverish coasts of Guyanna: there is no
distinction between the mode used by the Convention and that of
the Directory, except the distinction between to kill and to cause
death.[5184] Moreover, every brutality that can be employed to repress
the indignation of the proscribed by fear is exhausted on the way.--The
first convoy which bears away, with thirteen others, Barthelemy, who
negotiated the treaty of Basle, Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland,
Lafond-Ladebat, president of the council of the Five Hundred,
Barbe-Marbois, president of the council of the Ancients, was at first
provided with carriages.[5185] An order of the Directory substitutes for
these the prison van, an iron car with one door bolted and padlocked,
and, overhead, openings through which the rain poured in streams, and
with common boards for seats. This lumbering machine without springs
rolls along at a fast trot along the ruts in the road, each jolt