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64 gloom of the Terror; the dumbness of horror had given way to a reckless contempt for tyranny. A sordid, demented mania for speculation had invaded all classes, and refined and delicate women trafficked in pounds of sugar or yards of cloth.

An enormous sensation was produced by Ducancel's Nouveaux Aristides, ou l'Intérieur des Comités Révolutionnaires, a comedy in which its author distilled into every line the hoarded bitterness of his soul against the Jacobins.

Barras flaunted his cynical sensuality and shameless waste in the face of a bankrupt society; and austere revolutionaries, beguiled into the enervating atmosphere of the gilded salons, sold their principles with a stroke of the same pen that restored some illustrious proscribed one to his family. "Every one of us was soliciting the return of some émigré among his friends," writes Madame de Staël. "I obtained several recalls at this period; and in consequence the deputy Legendre, almost a man of the people, denounced me from the tribune of the Convention. The influence of women, and the power of good society, seemed very dangerous to those who were excluded, but whose colleagues were invited to be seduced. One saw on decadis, for Sundays existed no longer, all the elements of the old and new régime united, but not reconciled."

Into this seething world Madame de Staël threw herself with characteristic activity. Legendre's attack upon her, foiled by Barras, could not deter her from interference. Her mind being fixed upon some ideal Republic, she was anxious to blot out all record of past intolerance. The prospect of restoring an aristocrat to his home, or of shielding him from fresh