IX.
THE SYMMETRY OF BARRAS'S VILLAINY.
I am sure every reader of this, and of the passages I shall have still to quote, will feel a sentiment of intense disgust. Of all dishonours, there is none so base as that known as "kissing and telling." Barras does more. He not only tells, but he makes the weakness or the affection which women displayed to himself the basis of a charge and an enduring hatred against them. Up to the present he has given no instance of any wrong—either of ingratitude or desertion― which he suffered at the hands of the beautiful Madame Tallien; and yet he not only reveals his relations with her, but goes out of his way to represent her as self-seeking, lewd, and base. In the code of honour among men with any pretence to heart, or even to decency, I should put it as almost the first article that association with a woman had made her ever afterwards― amid change, after separation, even after desertion― a sacred being to be protected, above all things to be respected and to be spared.
But what a light these revelations of Barras throw on the meanness of his dark and cold soul! There is something to me positively appalling in this bit of self-portraiture. When I come across a man complete and perfect in vice, I at once feel as if I were face to face with some terrible portent of nature. And this man—willing to receive the
