The new Directorate obtained extensive powers from the newly-constituted Councils, revived the old stringent decrees against emigrants and priests, and initiated a long series of deportations. They sent 65 of the worst conspirators to Guiana—the guillotine would have been more merciful—and the rest to the Isle of Oléron. In all some 10,000 Nonconformist priests and returned royalists were prescribed, but only a proportion of these were actually banished. There was another general flight to the frontier. [Illustration: CARNOT.] As I said, it is absurd to ascribe to Talleyrand a very active share in these proceedings. The charge seems to rest chiefly on the authority of Miot de Melito and Pasquier; both are deeply prejudiced against Talleyrand (Miot de Melito had just been deposed from his embassy at Turin by the Foreign Minister), and both were hundreds of miles away from Paris at the time. It is a good instance of the levity with which the case against Talleyrand is conducted. Talleyrand was at Barras’ house the night before the _coup d’état_; so were Constant and Mme. de Staël, who, Pasquier admits, “wished the day but not the morrow.” It is admitted, moreover, that Talleyrand used every effort to moderate the execution of the laws, and saved several individuals from banishment. As to the defence of the proceedings in his letter to Napoleon and his circular letter to the government agents abroad, no one will be so foolish as to seek in these an expression of his judgment. Officially he had to present the case in optimistic language or resign. The only ground for a censure is, in fact, that he did not resign; and it would be to ascribe to Talleyrand a quite heroic degree of sensitiveness to expect him to resign on account of a procedure which Thiers soberly regards as having “prevented civil war, and substituted in its stead a stroke of policy executed with energy, but with all the calmness and moderation possible in times of revolution.”