The young member of convention accordingly put his hands into his pockets, and was not slow to discover there, as Madame Roland had acutely conjectured, a complete solution of his whole enigma. He found a paper bearing his address, in which an offer was made to him of the hand of the woman he (once, at least, had) loved, with a dowry of five hundred thousand francs, and the prospect of enjoying anew all the pleasures of his happy youth, provided that he supported the Appeal to the People on behalf of Louis XVI.--provided, in short, that he lent his influence to save the life, at all events, of the king. That such an appeal would have saved Louis from the scaffold, all men at the time believed. The Jacobins obviously thought so, since they obstinately denied him any such chance of escape. It is probable that the monetary clause in this proposal would alone have prevented its entertainment by the young deputy for Marseilles. Be this as it may, the romantic scheme which the friendship of uncle Jean, and the love of Melanie, had led them to enter upon, at the instance, doubtless of the other friends of Louis, for inducing Barbaroux to befriend the king, and for wiling himself from the dangerous vortex of political turmoil, ended in nothing. Within a few weeks--nay, a few days afterward--began that life-and-death struggle between the Girondists and Jacobins, which only terminated with the total fall of the former party, and the condemnation to the scaffold of all its leaders. To the honor of Barbaroux, be it told that, without a bribe, he supported the Appeal to the People, and had he had the power would have saved the ill-fated king from the extreme and bloody penalty of the guillotine. But the infuriate councils of Robespierre and Marat prevailed; and Barbaroux, with five companions, fled for safety to the Gironde, that southern portion of France, of which Bordeaux is the capital, and whence they had derived their party name. They found there, however, no safety; they were hunted down like wild beasts by the dominant faction, and every man of them was taken and beheaded, or otherwise perished miserably, with the exception of Louvet, who subsequently recorded their perils and their sufferings. Barbaroux, the young, gay, handsome and brave Barbaroux, died on the scaffold, while Petion met the death of a wild beast in the fields--starved while in life, and mangled by wolves when no more. Well had it been for Barbaroux, had he yielded timeously to the loving call of Melanie, made so romantically and mysteriously. It was not so destined to be.[2] [Footnote 2: This little story is drawn from the French. The Revolutionary era was so fertile in romantic incidents, springing at once from the theatrical character of the people, and the extraordinary excitement of the period, that the adventure of Barbaroux is quite within the range of probability. One vote did at last condemn Louis XVI.] "JUDGE NOT!"