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was recaptured. He had left in his room a most audacious letter' addressed to the Emperor. He was, nevertheless, soon after exchanged, in 1795, with other members of the Convention, for the present Dauphiness; and he was indebted to his recital of his captivity and sufferings for his subsequent admission into the Council of Five Hundred, and the appointment of secretary to that body.

Here, however, when the ferocity of the Revolution was spent, and its excesses began to be remembered with horror, his jacobinical violence and his avowed boast that, had he not been removed by captivity, he should have gloried to share in the career of Marat and Robespierre, excited strong detestation against him; and, on his engaging in one of the Jacobin plots against the Directory in 1796, he was arrested and thrown into confinement. In a few days he managed to effect his escape through the chimney of his prison, and engaged in new conspiracies against the Directory, until, finding the cause of the Jacobins finally lost, he consulted his safety by flight. He withdrew, in the first place, to Switzerland, but soon after quitted that retreat, and embarked for India. His vessel had touched at Teneriffe, just before the British attack on that island, and Drouet fought bravely in the defence of the place. Finding, while there, that he had been acquitted by the tribunals in his absence, he returned to France, and, in one of the last vicissitudes of the Revolution, contrived to obtain a pecuniary indemnity for his losses. He was also appointed sub-prefect of St. Menehould, and continued to hold this office, without interruption, throughout the long course of the consular and imperial governments. In 1810, he attended Napoleon over the field of Valmy, and pointed out to him the positions of the armies. The Revolution of 1814 removed him from office; but during the Hundred Days he was elected a deputy for his department to the Chamber of Representatives. After the second fall of Napoleon, he was excepted as a regicide from the law of amnesty, and condemned to banishment. It is yet uncertain whether he ever quitted France: but if he did, he shortly returned, and buried himself in strict privacy at Maçon, where, under the assumed name of Merger, he passed the last years of his life in utter oblivion. Unknown at Maçon,' says his biographer, he lived in retirement, decently, and even piously. In his last moments, he showed the remorse and contrition of a Christian penitent for his offences; but he did not explain himself farther, at least before witnesses: and the surprise was very great, when it was discovered, after his death, that M. Merger was the famous Drouet of St. Menehould.'

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Drouet was only a bold bad man, of ordinary ability and sufficient courage, such as by all political convulsions are thrown up to the surface of society. But Pache and Revellière-Lépeaux were characters far more remarkable, and quite peculiar to the epoch of the French Revolution: men who mingled a frantic passion for democracy with the pursuit of a philosophy as wild and visionary

in almost all other respects as in its political doctrines. Theirs was an universal licentious enthusiasm, applied at once to religion, morals, science, letters, and politics, such as no age of the world had ever before exhibited. An entirely new and all-pervading species of fanaticism, it sprang from and belonged exclusively to the unnatural and distempered state of French society during the eighteenth century. Before the Revolution, Pache had been employed as tutor in the family of the Maréchal de Castries, who settled a pension upon him, and gave him a place in the marine. Having married, Pache afterwards resided for some years in Switzerland, and even acquired property there; but the Revolution attracted him back to France, with the rude manners of a mountaineer, and all the fanaticism of the wildest democrat.' He began by returning to M. de Castries his deed of pension, and by resigning his brevet of commissary of the marine, and afterwards betook himself to serving the state gratuitously in the office of Roland, then Minister of the Interior. He was to be seen every morning at seven o'clock waiting for the opening of the doors of the office. and breakfasting on a piece of dry bread, which he brought in hi pocket.

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This conduct gained him some popularity, or at least a reput ation for singularity, which at the time was the road to fortune. The newspapers of the day called him Le bon homme Pache, and Papa Pache. Brissot and Roland both conceived an affection for him, and extolled him much; and the latter, on the retirement of Servan from the ministry of War, procured the nomination of Pache to succeed him in October, 1792. He was no sooner installed in this post than he abandoned his former protectors, began to ally himself secretly with the Jacobins, and quickly became, under the guise of a placid exterior, one of the most insidious and dangerous enemies of the Girondists, to whom he owed his fortunes. His administration of the war-department was violent, tyrannical, and extravagantly wasteful. He supported his agents in Belgium and other conquered provinces in their work of pillage and destruction, not, as it should seem, from any cupidity, but from the strange wantonness and unaccountable love of disorder, which were so prevalent at that frightful epoch. The nation suffered no less than the conquered provinces by the total disorganisation of the war-department under the ministry of Pache; and the evil became so insupportable, that the Girondists succeeded ir obtaining his removal from office.

His exasperation at this disgrace served only to augment his hatred of the Girondists, and to cement his connection with the Jacobins. He soon found means to exercise his dangerous qualities; and only a few days after his expulsion from the ministry, he was tumultuously elected Mayor of Paris by the anarchical party which prevailed in the municipality. In this station, he was indefatigable in fomenting the work of mischief; and he never rested

until the populace had been wrought up to insurrection, and instigated to demand the proscription of the Girondists. He was therefore a prime mover in the ruin of his former friends; and when the Girondists were brought before the revolutionary tribunal which hurried them to the scaffold, he appeared against them to seal their fate by his denunciations. He afterwards acted for some time in concert with Robespierre, until that demagogue, as capricious as he was sanguinary, suddenly preferred some accusation against him, and he was thrown into prison. The fall of Robespierre saved him from the scaffold: he was afterwards a second time denounced under the Directory, but easily succeeded in justifying himself; and then suddenly, as if disgusted with the world and its affairs, in which he had played so atrocious a part, he retired to a national domain which he had acquired in the Ardennes, and thenceforth was not only spoken of no more, but seemed himself to avoid hearing or speaking of others. We shall give, in the translated words of his biographer, the following authentic details (which he declares that he has obtained) on the last twentyfive years of the life of this man, who, after a career so stormy and turbulent, thus plunged all at once into the most profound obscurity and quiet.

The domain of Thym-le-Moûtiers, on which Pache resided throughout the whole period of the Directory and Empire, and for the nine first years of the Restoration, formed all his property, and brought him in only from three to four thousand francs a-year (less than 170.). This mediocrity of fortune was sufficient for his wants and his tastes, and he even knew how to extract a superfluity from it for works of benevolence. In 1814 and 1815 his tenants owed it to his generosity that they were not ruined, like many others, by the charges of the war, which he took upon himself. He found himself obliged, however, in 1815, to sell a fourth part of his property; and it was much about the same epoch that anxiety and disgust caused him to lose his memory to such a degree that thenceforth until his death, which happened towards the close of 1823, it had become difficult to him to support a conversation even for a few moments. Pache never left his retreat, except for the purpose of assisting occasionally at the meetings of the agricultural society of Mézières, of which he was a member. He never spoke of the political events of his life, nor yet of subsequent public occurrences, of which he wished to remain in ignorance, for he never read the newspapers. He did not even engage in any of the local business of his district. Without any intimacies, and without habitual society, he was nevertheless beloved by the country people who surrounded him he rendered them all the services in his power; and, above all, he took pleasure in giving gratuitous instruction to the youth of his neighbourhood. He opened his library to them, where they found many works on mathematics, physics, and natural history; and he communicated his lessons to them with imperturbable patience. It was thus that he formed many of our geometrical surveyors. His conduct was that of a philanthropic savage: but it is painful to add, that the heart of Pache was warmed by no religious feelings. The greater

number of his pupils are atheists, and avowed atheists. It is probably in the same spirit that he was preparing an elaborate course of metaphysics, in which he was long earnestly occupied, and which the decay of his intellectual faculties obliged him to leave incomplete. The manuscript has passed into the hands of his son, M. Pache, lieutenantcolonel of artillery, at this time (1825) employed on active service.' p. 244.

From this article we pass to that on Revellière-Lépeaux; whose memory does not, however, deserve to be placed altogether in conjunction with that of Pache. For, vitally erroneous as were his principles, and unhappy and pernicious as was his application of them, Revellière-Lépeaux cannot be denied the praise of good intentions and incorruptible integrity. We have here rather a long and a very interesting memoir of him, communicated by a friend, as the editor is careful to premise; as he is also, besides this caution, to qualify its partiality sufficiently by his own strictures. Revellière-Lépeaux was of a respectable family of La Vendée, and had been originally destined for the profession of the law. Before the Revolution, he had married a woman of intellectual pursuits, and was happily settled near Angers. His wife was fond of botany, and communicated her taste to him: his own mind was highly cultivated; and they moved in a small circle of friends, whose habits were congenial. The members of this society had imbibed the growing opinions of the times, and were so enamoured of the visions of republican equality, that they had resolved to seek together an asylum of liberty either in Switzerland or America.

After balancing the choice, the preference had just been declared for America, when the events of 1789 enchained their attention and hopes to their own country; and Revellière-Lépeaux soon plunged enthusiastically into the vortex of the Revolution. He was elected deputy for Angers to the States-General; and his first acts in the National Assembly manifested his republican principles. Proceeding in the same career in the Convention, he voted for the death of the King, and sided throughout with the Girondists. He fearlessly denounced the nascent projects of Robespierre; and in his whole course of political life exhibited a boldness and hardihood of spirit, which were remarkably contrasted with bodily weakness and infirmities. Owing to the brutal treatment which he received in his youth from a priest his preceptor, who used to strike him violently on the back and stomach, his spine and chest had grown deformed, and condemned him to an existence of corporeal suffering. Upon some occasion he followed the infamous Danton to the tribune of the Convention to oppose his motion. "Que viens-tu faire ici?" said the athletic ruffian rudely, looking down upon his feeble adversary with mingled surprise and derision. quer et te confondre," replied he. "Toi!" cried Danton with a jesture of contempt, "je te ferais tourner sur la pouce."allons voir," was the cool rejoinder," Mais qui t'a donné tant

"Te démas

"Nous

de présomption?" said one of Danton's party, who followed to his support." J'ai la conscience d'un homme, il n'a que l'audace d'un scélérat,” replied Revellière. The speech, which he afterwards pronounced from the tribune, was full of energy, and had the effect of delaying the final victory of the Jacobins for a few days.

On the fall of the Girondists, and the triumph of their adversaries, Revellière-Lépeaux was denounced, but fled in time to save his life. He remained concealed in various parts of France, while his wife and daughter were driven from their home in La Vendée by the royalists, and his house and property were reduced to ashes. When the fall of Robespierre permitted Revellière to emerge from his concealment, he was re-united to his family at Paris, and restored to his seat in the Convention. Thenceforth, for some years, his political career was prosperous and distinguished. He filled several offices in the Convention, was one of its last presidents, and finally became a leading member in the first Executive Directory of five. We shall not follow his biographer through the vicissitudes, less sanguinary, but scarcely less rapid, than those of the earlier stages of the Revolution, which prepared the dissolution of the Directory and the establishment of the consular and imperial governments. These vicissitudes removed Revellière from political office; and he seems, in the weariness and disappointment which had succeeded to his enthusiasm, to have retired gladly into private life. He was poor, but he maintained to the last the austere integrity of his republican principles; nor, throughout the long and despotic reign of Buonaparte, could he ever be incluced to accept any of the pecuniary offers of the Usurper, nor even to conciliate his power.

His friend and biographer enlarges much on Buonaparte's hatred of him, and of the last proof of aversion which he bequeathed to him in a passage in the Mémorial de St. Hélène. But we judge, on the contrary, that the despot evinced much magnanimity towards so feeble an enemy; and his forbearance, with regard to Revellière, appears, indeed, in favourable contrast to his mean rancour against another defenceless opponent (Pius VII.), which is also recorded in this volume. It is singular and honourable to Napoleon that, so far from provoking him to tyrannical extremities, the stubborn hostility of Revellière seems only to have inspired him with respect for the sturdy republican, and with the inclination to serve him. The First Consul frequently solicited the Ex-Director to appear at the Thuileries: his only answer was, that if the Consul wished to see him, he knew that he received every one politely. The Emperor commanded the Institute to take the oaths of fidelity, and Revellière as a member was specially summoned to render this obedience. He refused; and in reply to the fears of his friends, observed only, "He may crush me, for he is strong and I am feeble; but there is one thing above his power he cannot make me bend." Napoleon then contented himself with

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