a month. . . Tours, a prey to the
terrorists who devour the department and hold all the offices, is in
the most deplorable state; every family at all well-off, every
merchant, every trader, is leaving it." -- The veteran pillagers and
murderers, the squireens, (hobereaux) of the reign of Terror, again
appear and resume their fiefs. At Toulouse, it is Barrau, a
shoemaker, famous up to 1792 for his fury under Robespierre, and
Desbarreaux, another madman of 1793, formerly an actor playing the
parts of valet, compelled in 1795 to demand pardon of the audience on
his knees on the stage, and, not obtaining it, driven out of the
house, and now filling the office of cashier in the theatre and posing
as department administrator. At Blois, we find the ignoble or
atrocious characters with whom we are familiar, the assassins and
robbers H?zine, Giot, Venaille, B?zard, Berger, and Gidouin.[88]
Immediately after Fructidor, they stirred up their usual supporters
against the first convoy of the deported, "the idlers, the rabble of
the harbor, and the dregs of the people," who overwhelmed them with
insults. On this new demonstration of patriotism the government
restores to them their administrative or judicial "satrapies, and,
odious as they are, they are endured and obeyed, with the mute and
mournful obedience of despair.
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