The Girondists remained a moment overwhelmed by the humiliation of their fall and the joy of their coming vengeance.  “Here I am dismissed,” was Roland’s exclamation to his wife, on his return home.  “I have but one regret, and that is, that our delays have prevented us from taking the initiative.”  Madame Roland retired to a humble apartment, without losing any of her influence and without regretting power, since she carried with her into her retreat, her genius, her patriotism, and her friends.  With her the conspiracy only changed place; from the ministry of the interior she passed at once into the small council which she gathered about her, and inspired with her own earnest enthusiasm.

This circle daily increased.  The admiration for the woman mingled in the hearts of her friends with the attraction of liberty.  They adored in her the future Republic.  The love which these young men did not avow for her made, unknown to her, a portion of their politics.  Ideas only become active and powerful when vivified by sentiment.  She was the sentiment of her party.

This party was joined about this time by a man unconnected with the Gironde; but his youth, his remarkable beauty, and his energy naturally threw him into this faction of illusion and love, controlled by a woman.  This young man was Barbaroux.

At this time he was only twenty-six years of age.  Born at Marseilles, of a sea-faring family, who preserved in their manners and features something of the boldness of their life and the agitation of their element.  The elegance of his stature, the poetic grace of his countenance, recalled the accomplished forms which antiquity adored in the statues of Antinous.  The blood of that Asiatic Greece of which Marseilles is a colony revealed itself in the purity of the young Phocian’s profile.[21] As richly endowed with the gifts of the mind as those of the body, Barbaroux early used himself to public oratory, that gift of the men of the south.  He became a barrister, and pleaded several causes with success; but the power and honesty of his mind revolted from that exercise of eloquence, so often mercenary, which simulates earnestness.  He required a national cause, to which a man should give with language his soul and blood.  The Revolution with which he was born offered this to him.  He awaited with impatience the occasion and the hour to make use of it.

His youth still kept him away from the scene into which he ardently longed to cast himself.  He passed his time near the village of Ollioules, on a small family estate, concealed beneath tall cork-trees, which threw their slight shade over the calcined declivities of this valley.  He there attended to the cultivated patches which the aridity of the soil and the burning sun dispute with the rocks.  In his leisure he studied natural sciences, and kept up a correspondence with two Swiss, whose systems of physics then occupied the learned world—­M. de Saussure and Marat.