The stern, single-minded, terribly resolute men of the Great Committee, who had worked fourteen hours a day in a plainly furnished room of the Tuileries, taking their lunch like common clerks as they stood about the table at which they wrote,--smiling perhaps, as they ate, at some jest of Barère,--with no thought of enriching themselves, intent only upon working out the problems of the Revolution in order that France might find her way to a future of glory and happiness--these men were gone, to come no more. Fiercely attached to variant creeds, they had warred among themselves, destroying each other, wearying the world with violence, and giving the scoundrels the opportunity to cry “Peace!” and to seize control. True, the work of the Revolution had been done too well to be wholly undone. Feudalism had been torn up root and branch; it could never be so flourishing again. Absolutism, royal and papal infallibility, had been trodden into the mire where they belonged; they might be set in place again, but they would never more look quite so dazzling, nor be worshipped with quite such blindness of devotion. Great principles of civil and religious liberty had been planted; they could never be wholly plucked out. The human race had for once seen a great people fill its lungs and its brain with the air and the inspiration of absolute freedom from priest, king, aristocrat, precedent, conventionality, and caste-made law; the spectacle would never be forgotten, nor the example cease to blaze as a beacon, lighting the feet and kindling the hopes of the world. But, for the time, the triumph of the venal brought with it shame and disaster to the entire body politic. The public service corrupt, the moral tone of society sank. Ideals came into contempt, idealists into ridicule. The “man of the world,” calling himself practical, and priding himself on his ability to play to the baser passions of humanity, laughed revolutionary dogmas aside, put revolutionary simplicity and honesty out of fashion, made a jest of duty and patriotism, and prostituted public office into a private opportunity. Hordes of adventurers, male and female, stormed the administration, took it, and looted it. The professional money-getter controlled the Directory: the contractor, stock-jobber, fund-holder, peculator, and speculator. In all matters pertaining to finance, the Bourse was the government. The nobility of the Old Order had monopolized the State’s favors under the kings; the rich men of the middle class, the Bourgeoisie, did so now. The giver and the taker of bribes met and smiled upon each other; the lobbyist hunted his prey and found it. Once again the woman, beautiful, shrewd, and unchaste, became greater than the libertine official who had surrendered to her charms; and she awarded fat contracts, trafficked in pardons and appointments, and influenced the choice of army chiefs.