Sent at thirty years of age to the States General, with Mounier his patron and master, he had soon quitted Mounier and the monarchical party, and made himself conspicuous amongst the democratic division.

A word of sinister import which escaped not from his heart, but from his lips, weighed on his conscience with remorse.

"Is then the blood that flows so pure ?" he exclaimed at the first murder of the Revolution.

This phrase had branded him on the brow with the mark of a ringleader of faction.

Barnave was not this, or only as much so as was necessary for the success of his discourses; nothing in him was extreme but the orator: the man was by no means so, neither was he at all cruel.
Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, his intellect was mediocre, his mind honest, his will variable, his heart in the right place.