he had marked out Barras as one of the "corrupt men" of whom the sanguinary guillotine was to rid the nation. Barras, doubtless, felt this too, and this adds a terrible interest to the account which these Memoirs give of the interview between the two men. One can almost read between its lines the deadly hate, the mutual terror, the severe examination of each other's resources, which these duellists were already feeling before they crossed swords in the fight to the death.
Here is the account Barras gives of the interview:
"I finally resolved on calling upon this almightiness, this representative of Republican purity, the incorruptible one par excellence. I had never had more than a passing glimpse of Robespierre, either on the benches or in the hallways of the Convention; we had never had any personal intercourse. His frigid attitude, his scorn of courtesies, had imposed on me the maintenance of a reserve which my self-pride dictated to me when in face of an equal. Fréron considered our safety depended on this visit, so we wended our way to the residence of Robespierre. It was a little house situated in the Rue Saint-Honoré, almost opposite the Rue Saint-Florentin. I think it no longer exists nowadays, owing to the opening made to create the Rue Dupont just at that spot. This house was occupied and owned by a carpenter, by name
