“Robespierre is dead!”— Notre Dame de Thermidor—End of the Terror—The prisons open—Decline of Tallien’s power—Barras—Napoleon—“Notre Dame de Septembre!”—M. Ouvrard—Separates from Tallien—He goes to Egypt—Consul in Spain—Dies in Paris—Térèzia stays in Paris—Ingratitude of some she had saved—Marries the Prince de Chimay—Conclusion.
Capital letter R

ROBESPIERRE was dead, and Tallien, for the time, reigned in his stead; and with him and over him, Térèzia, or, as she may be called, Mme. Tallien, for although Tallien before spoke of her as his wife, it was only after the 9th Thermidor that some sort of marriage ceremony was performed. But the name she now received, amongst the acclamation of the populace, was “Notre Dame de Thermidor.” For it was she who had brought about the deliverance of that day; for her and by her the Terror had been broken up; and although the Thermidoriens, led by Tallien, Barras and Fréron, had re-established or continued the Comité de Salut Public, the greater number of the blood-stained tyrants who ruled the Revolution still remained, and many horrors and tyrannies for some time longer went on; still there was at once an enormous difference. The revolutionary gang had, of course, [336] not altered its nature, those of whom it was composed were the same, cruel, remorseless, and steeped in crimes; but however much they wished it they could not continue to carry on the terrorism against which the anger of the populace was now aroused.

The people had had enough; they were tired of blood and murder. Even before Thermidor they had begun to murmur as the cars of victims passed through the streets; a reaction had begun.

The prisons were thrown open, the Directoire was far milder than the Convention, pardons were obtained in numbers, especially by Térèzia, who, when she could not succeed in saving persons in danger in any other way, had often risked her own safety to help and conceal them.

Paris seemed to be awaking into life again; the streets were more animated, the people to be seen in them were more numerous and did not all look either brutal or terror-stricken. Art, literature, and social gaiety began to revive.

One of the odious, inevitable republican fêtes was, of course, given to celebrate the events of Thermidor. Mme. Tallien opened a salon, where, as in the others then existing, the strange, uncouth figures of the sans-culottes mingled with others whose appearance and manners showed that they were renegades and traitors to their own order and blood.

Conspicuous amongst these was Barras, who, though his hands were deeply dyed in the blood of the Terror, belonged to one of the noblest families in Provence.

[337]

“Noble comme un Barras,” was, in fact, a common saying of the country.

His was the leading salon of Paris at that time, and Mme. Tallien was the presiding genius there. Music, dancing, and gambling were again the rage, the women called themselves by mythological names and wore costumes so scanty and transparent that they were scarcely any use either for warmth or decency; marriages, celebrated by a civic functionary, were not considered binding, and were frequently and quickly followed by divorce. Society, if such it could be called, was a wild revel of disorder, licence, debauchery, and corruption; while over all hung, like a cloud, the gloomy figures of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d’Herbois, Barère, and their Jacobin followers, ready at any moment to bring back the Terror.

So it was on a volcano that they feasted and sang and danced and made love, and Térèzia was the life and soul of the pandemonium which had taken the place of the graceful, polished, cultivated society of the ancien régime.

Her first care had been to release from the Carmes her fellow-prisoners, Joséphine de Beauharnais and Mme. d’Aiguillon, who now formed an intimate part of her society and that of Barras. To them also came Mme. de Stael, wife of the Swedish Ambassador, the beautiful Mme. Regnault-de-Saint-Jean-d’Angely, Mme. Cambys, and many others thankful to escape from the shadows of prison and death to the light of liberty and pleasure. The restraints of religion and morality were, of course, non-existent; liaisons and [338] licence were the order of the day, and Térèzia was not likely to be an exception to the general custom. She had, besides her daughter by Tallien, other children, who, as no other name belonged to them, were called Cabarrus. And her being or calling herself Tallien’s wife was no reason why she should renounce her natural right to love any one else where, when, and as often as she pleased.

And Barras pleased her. His distinguished appearance and manners contrasted with those of her present surroundings, and recalled the days when she lived amongst people who were polite and well-bred, knew how to talk and eat and enter a drawing-room, and behave when they were in it; and who wore proper clothes and did not call each other “citoyen,” or any other ridiculous names, and conversation was delightful, and scenes and memories of blood and horror unknown. It may well have been at this time that she began to yearn after that former existence she had been so rashly eager to throw away.

Her love for Tallien was beginning to wane. It had never been more than a mad passion, aroused by excitement, romance, and the strange circumstances which threw them into each other’s way; and kept alive by vanity, interest, gratitude, and perhaps above all by success. She wanted Tallien to be a great power, a great man; and she was beginning to see that he was nothing of the sort. If, when Robespierre fell, instead of helping to set up a government composed of other men, he had seized the reins himself, she would have supported him heart and soul, shared his power, ambition, [339] and danger, and probably her admiration and pride might have preserved her love for him. But Tallien had not the power to play such a part; he had neither brains nor character to sway the minds of men and hold their wills in bondage to his own. And now he was in a position which in any line of life surely bars the way to success: he was neither one thing or the other.

Between him and the royalists were the September massacres, rivers of blood, crimes and blasphemies without end.

Between him and the Jacobins, the death of Robespierre and the destruction of the Montagne.

And he saw that his influence was declining and with it the love of the woman to whom he was still devoted.

Of course there were disputes and jealousies as time went on. It is of Tallien that is told the story of his complaint to his wife—

“Tu ne me tutoies plus!” and of her answer—

“Eh bien! va-t-en.”

Their first house in Paris was a sort of imitation cottage, after the execrable taste of the day, in the Champs-Elysées, from which they moved into a h?tel in the rue de la Victoire, which was for some time the resort of all the chiefs of their political party, and the scene of constant contention between the Thermidoriens and the remnants of the Montagne. The discussions were generally political, and often violent; they would have been abhorrent to the well-bred society of former days.

Barras was the leading spirit in this society, and for some time he was at Térèzia’s feet. But if [340] Tallien was not a great man, neither was Barras; amongst all the unscrupulous ruffians of the revolutionary party there did not appear to be one superior enough to his fellows to command or lead them.

And yet there was one: “a young, pale, sickly-looking Italian,” who lived in a third-rate inn, wore a shabby uniform, and frequented the parties of Barras and the rest. He was not a conspicuous figure nor a particularly honoured guest; his military career had been apparently ruined by the spite of his enemies; he seemed to have no money, no connections, and no prospects. But in a few years all of them—all France and nearly all Europe—were at his feet, for it was Napoleon Buonaparte.
NAPOLEON

His career, however, was even now beginning; and not long after Térèzia, in the height of her beauty and power with Paris at her feet, rejected his love-making but accepted his friendship, he was sent to Italy and began the series of triumphs which were to raise him to the throne of France.

As time went on Térèzia found that her influence as well as that of Tallien was rapidly declining. Her salon was not at all likely to last long. Those of the court and of society before the Revolution had been of an entirely different order; held by women who, besides their beauty or other attractions, were in an assured position, surrounded by well-known connections and friends, forming an intimate society sure to be met at their houses, and always ready to carry on conversation, avoid all topics likely to give offence, and make themselves generally agreeable. Nobody was admitted there who [341] was not accustomed to the usages of the world or who would interfere with the harmony and general tone of the house. People went there, not to engage in political discussions or to make love to their hostess, but to spend a pleasant evening and meet the friends they knew and liked. These salons continued to be frequented by their usual guests year after year without any more change than the lapse of time inevitably brings.

Laure Permon, Duchesse d’Abrantès, than whom no one was a better judge of these matters, observes—

“To ‘receive’ is to have an open house, where one can go every evening with the certainty of finding it lighted up and inhabited, the host ready to receive one with pleasu............