He was dressed in a blue dress-coat, which in spite of the heat of the weather, was buttoned close round his body; he was rather a dandy in his costume, for his tightly-fitted breeches were made to show the form of his well-formed leg, and his cravat was without a wrinkle.  Before the Revolution, Barrere had been a wealthy aristocrat.

Santerre, who sat next to him, was in every respect unlike the ci-devant nobleman.  He was a large, rough, burly man, about forty years of age; his brown hair was long and uncombed, his face was coarse and hot, and the perspiration was even now running down it, though drinking and smoking was at present his hardest work; his lips were thick and sensual, and his face was surrounded by huge whiskers, which made him look uncouth and savage; his cravat was thrown off, and his shirt was open at the neck, so as to show his brown throat and brawny chest; a huge horse pistol lay before him close to his glass, and a still huger sword stood up against his chair.  He was drinking hard and talking loudly, and was evidently quite at ease with his company; he was as completely at home in the Mayor’s parlour at Angers, as when rushing into the Tuilleries at the head of his fellow citizens from the faubourg St. Antoine.

Santerre was of Flemish descent, and by trade a brewer.  He was possessed of considerable wealth, which he freely spent among the poor, while famine pressed sore upon them; he was consequently loved, followed, and obeyed.  He was the King of the Faubourgs; and though the most ruthless in his animosity to the royalists, he was not altogether a bad man, neither was he by nature absolutely cruel.  He had adopted the Revolution from a belief that the great mass of the people would be better off in the world without kings, nobility, or aristocrats; and having made himself firm in this belief, he used to the utmost his coarse, huge, burly power in upsetting these encumbrances on the nation.  His love of liberty had become a fanaticism.  He had gone with the current, and he had no fine feelings to be distressed at the horrid work which he had to do, no humanity to be shocked; but he was not one of those who delighted in bloodshed and revelled in the tortures which he inflicted on others.  He had been low in the world’s esteem, and the Revolution had raised him to a degree of eminence; this gratified his ambition, and made him a ready tool in the hands of those who knew how to use his well-known popularity, his wealth, his coarse courage and great physical powers.

Westerman sat at the window a little away from the others.  He was a man of indomitable courage and undying perseverance.  He was a German, who had been banished from Prussia, and having entered the French army as a private soldier had gradually risen to be an officer.  A short time before the storming of the Tuilleries he had foreseen that the democratic party was prevailing, and he had joined it.  Danton and Santerre had discovered and appreciated his courage