With this last vigorous stroke the Convention closed its extraordinary career,--a career that began with the monarchy, passed through the reign of terror, and finished in the Directoire. {239} CHAPTER XVI THE DIRECTOIRE With the Directoire the Revolution enters its last phase, and with that phase all readers of history connect certain well-marked external characteristics, extravagance of dress, of manners, of living; venality and immorality unblushing and unrestrained. The period of the Directoire is that during which the political men of the Revolution, with no principles left to guide them, gradually rot away; while the men of the sword become more and more their support, and finally oust them from power. The Councils, apart from the ex-members of the Convention, were found to be far less royalist than had been expected. The farming class, which had had great influence in the elections, had gained much from the Revolution; the farmers had got rid of the feudal burdens; they had acquired land; they had profited from free transit. Anxious to retain what they had won, they elected men of {240} moderate views rather than reactionaries. The voice of these new members could not, however, influence the choice of the Directors, who were all taken from the ex-conventionnels. They were Barras, Rewbell, Carnot, Larevelliere and Letourneur. Of these Letourneur and Carnot were ready to listen to the wishes of the electorate, and to join hands with the new party of moderates in a constructive policy. The other three however took their stand firmly on the maintenance of the settlement effected by the Convention, and on deriving all the personal advantage they could from power. Rewbell began to accumulate a vast fortune, and Barras to squander and luxuriate. The officials appointed by the Directors were as needy and rapacious as their chiefs. Everything could be had for money. England and the United States were offered treaties on the basis of first purchasing the good will of ministers for Foreign Affairs or Directors. In the gilded halls of the Luxembourg, Barras, surrounded by a raffish court, dispensed the honours and the spoils of the new regime. Women in astounding and wilfully indecent dresses gravitated about him and his entourage, women representing all the strata heaved upwards by the Revolution, with here {241} and there a surviving aristocrat, like the widow of Beauharnais, needy, and turning to the new sun to relieve her distress. Among them morality was at the lowest ebb. For the old sacrament of marriage had been virtually demolished by law; civil marriage and divorce had been introduced, and in the governing classes, so much affected in family life and fortune by the reign of terror, the step between civil marriage and what was no marriage at all soon appeared a distinction without much difference. There seemed only one practical rule for life, to find the means of subsistence, and to have as good a time as possible.