ging to his
father, a lawyer at Vieuzac. He began to practise as an advocate at the
parlement of Toulouse in 1770, and soon earned a considerable reputation as
an orator; while his brilliant and flowing style as a writer of essays led
to his election as a member of the Academy of Floral Games of Toulouse in
1788. At the age of thirty he married. Four years later, in 1789, he was
elected deputy by the estates of Bigorre to the states-general, which met
in May. He had made his first visit to Paris in the preceding year. His
personal appearance, his manners, social qualities and liberal opinions,
gave him a good standing among the multitude of provincial deputies then
thronging into Paris. He [v.03 p.0398] attached himself at first to the
constitutional party; but he was less known as a speaker in the Assembly
than as a journalist. His paper, however, the _Point du Jour_, according to
Aulard, owes its reputation not so much to its own qualities as to the fact
that the painter David, in his famous picture of the "Oath in the Tennis
Court," has represented Barere kneeling in the corner and writing a report
of the proceedings as though for posterity. The reports of the debates of
the National Assembly in the _Point du Jour_, though not inaccurate, are as
a matter of fact very incomplete and very dry. After the flight of the king
to Varennes, Barere passed over to the republican party, though he
continued to keep in touch with the duke of Orleans, to whose natural
daughter, Pamela, he was tutor. Barere, however, appears to have been
wholly free from any guiding principle; conscience he had none, and his
conduct was regulated only by the determination to be on the side of the
strongest. After the close of the National Assembly he was nominated one of
the judges of the newly instituted court of cassation from October 1791 to
September 1792. In 1792 he was elected deputy to the National Convention
for the department of the Hautes-Pyrenees. At first he voted with the
Girondists, attacked Robespierre, "a pygmy who should not be set on a
pedestal," and at the trial of the king voted with the Mountain for the
king's death "without appeal and without delay." He closed his speech with
a sentence which became memorable: "the tree of liberty could not grow were
it not watered with the blood of kings." Appointed member of the Committee
of Public Safety on the 7th of April 1793, he busied himself with foreign
affairs; then, joining the party