All that
amour-propre could demand was obtained, and they obtained more than
could be prudently expected; there was not a competent and patriotic
statesman in France who would not have signed the treaty with the
greatest satisfaction. - But the motives which, before Fructidor,
animated Carnot and Barth?l?my, the motives which, after Fructidor,
animated Colchen and Maret, do not animate the Fructidoreans. France
is of but little consequence to them; they are concerned only for
their faction, for power, and for their own persons. La R?velli?re,
president of the Directory, through vainglory, "wanted to have his
name go with the general peace;" but he is controlled by Barras, who
needs war in order to fish in troubled waters,[113] and especially by
Reubell, a true Jacobin in temperament and intellect, "ignorant and
vain, with the most vulgar prejudices of an uneducated and illiterate
man," one of those coarse, violent, narrow sectarians anchored on a
fixed idea and whose "principles consist in revolutionizing everything
with cannon-balls without examining wherefore."[114] There is no need
of knowing the wherefore; the animal instinct of self-preservation
suffices to impel the Jacobins onward, and, for a long time, their
clear-sighted men, among them Si?y?s, their thinker and oracle, have
told them that "if they make peace they are lost.
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