s derived from the shambles.[3277] Not
an idea is found in all this rhetoric, nothing acquired, no real mental
application. When Bonaparte, who employed everybody, even Fouche, were
disposed to employ Barere, they could make nothing out of him for lack
of substance, except as a low newsmonger, common spy, or agent engaged
to stir up surviving Jacobins; later on, a listener at keyholes, and
a paid weekly collector of public rumors, he was not even fit for this
vile service, for his wages were soon stopped Napoleon, who, having no
time to waste, cut short his driveling verbiage.--It is this verbiage
which, authorized by the Committee of Public Safety, now forms the
eloquence of France; it is this manufacturer of phrases by the dozen,
this future informer and prison-spy under the empire, this frolicking
inventor of the blonde-wig conspiracy, that the government sends into
the tribune to announce victories, trumpet forth military heroism and
proclaim war unto death. On the 7th of Prairial,[3278] Barere, in the
name of the committee, proposes a return to savage law: "No English or
Hanoverian prisoner shall henceforth be made;" the decree is endorsed by
Carnot and passes the Convention unanimously. Had it been executed, as
reprisals, and according to the proportion of prisoners, there would
have been for one Englishman shot, three Frenchmen hung: honor and
humanity would have disappeared from the camps; the hostilities between
Christians would have become as deadly as among savages. Happily, French
soldiers felt the nobleness of their profession; on the order being
given to shoot the prisoners, a decent sergeant replied:

"We will not shoot--send them to the Convention. If the representatives
delight in killing prisoners--let them do it themselves, and eat them,
too, savages as they are!"

The sergeant, an ordinary man, is not on a level with the Committee,
or with Barere; and yet Barere did his best in a bill of indictment of
twenty-seven pages, full of grand flourishes, every possible ritornello,
glaring falsehood and silly inflation, explaining how "the Britannic
leopard" paid assassins to murder the representatives; how the London
cabinet had armed little Cecile Renault, "the new Corday," against
Robespierre; how the Englishman, naturally barbarous, "is unable to deny
his origins; how he descends from the Carthaginians and Phenicians, and
formerly dealt in the skins of wild beasts and slaves; how his trading
occupation i