At the frontiers men could only accept the decrees of the omnipotent capital.

Moreover, the Revolution, after passing through the molten stage, was now beginning to solidify, an important opportunity for the political craftsman.

The spring of the year 1795 witnessed a strange blending of the new fanaticism with the old customs.

Society, dammed up for a time by the Spartan rigour of Robespierre, was now flowing back into its wonted channels.

Gay equipages were seen in the streets; theatres, prosperous even during the Terror, were now filled to overflowing; gambling, whether in money or in stocks and _assignats_, was now permeating all grades of society; and men who had grown rich by amassing the confiscated State lands now vied with bankers, stock-jobbers, and forestallers of grain in vulgar ostentation.