How much time do we have? Look, I don't know a lot about Barras, but nothing - nothing - can be as embarrassing as Jean-Lambert Tallien. He is the biggest loser both in terms of "a flop" and "who lost during the revolution" (and he lost more than many people who ended up guillotined, imo).

And I don't even know how/why it happened! He started out okay - he had modest skills but seemed honest about the revolution. Then Bordeaux happened. Thermidor and months after were Jean-Lambert's five minutes of fame, but then it dissolved quickly, both in his professional and in private life.

The Quiberon Invasion mess in 1795 is one of the first examples, when he and Hoche (well, Tallien mostly because it was his orders) executed 750 royalists even after promising they'd be treated like prisoners of war. Yes, those were royalists who made an invasion on France so it's not surprising that they died, but 1) Hoche I think promised they'd be spared but Tallien ordered the execution, 2) Tallien was the one who ran his mouth so much after Thermidor about sparing people and now he executed in one day half of the number of people that were executed in the entire Great Terror, and 3) Seems like Tallien had some pro-royalist dealings/conversations with foreign powers (Spain mostly) and wanted to do a cover-up (? - will need to look into this further).

In his private life, Theresia wanted to leave him as early as 1796 and was reportedly banging Barras, but Tallien begged her to give him another chance. She said yes, and 9 months later she gave birth to a stillborn boy. We are not sure if the baby was Barras' or Tallien's. Life in the Directoire was not great for Jean-Lambert and he was struggling with money, so he joined Napoleon's expedition to Egypt. It was horrible; he was miserable and suffered health problems. He wrote clingy letters to Theresia ("Care for our daughter and be faithful to me, my love!") (Spoiler: She was already on kid number two by the banker). The letters were intercepted by the enemy and read publicly. On his way from Egypt, Tallien was arrested and spent some time with the enemy but was released. Coming back from France must have been horrible, though, because Theresia asked for a divorce (and by the time it was done, she was already pregnant with banker's baby number 3). Because the kids were technically conceived while she was married to Tallien, they later successfully asked to have Tallien as their last name and were known as "Tallien bastards" in the family. After, it was just a series of bad circumstances and decisions. Theresia remarried, to a Belgian prince, and we have a letter where Tallien begged her not to do that. Fouché tried to help him and found him a job in Alicante. But it was horrible because the whole town was infected by the Yellow Fever. Tallien contracted it and lost one eye. It is also possible that this is where he got leprosy (?)

When he got back to France, he was a ruin. He supported Napoleon in 1815, hoping to get some influence (I assume), but then Waterloo happened so another bad call for Jean-Lambert. He lived in poverty and only escaped banishment during the Bourbon restoration because of his poor health. He died at 53 of leprosy (at least wiki claims so - I could never verify it but we know he suffered poor health for years).

Sure, he lost his "title" of "the main young firebrand of the revolution" after SJ made his first speech in November 1792, but they kept giving him tasks. For a loong time. So no idea what happened with this man.

Here is description of the Dantons' house:

It seems to say "[…] nous fumes tous chez D [Danton]. Sa mère pleurait, elle était triste, son père avoit l'air ebeté[…] (= We were at Danton's house. His mother was crying and sad. His father was dazed[…])". This "Sa mère" could be Danton's mother or Gabrielle's mother (if the former, it seems odd that she would come all the way from Arcis to dangerous Paris), not Gabrielle. The next sentence is hard to read, but I still think the subject is "son père" (= maybe Georges or Gabrielle's father), not "son petit".

I also read the description afterwards and was able to confirm that it was Madame Robert (=Louise Kéralio) who fainted and was taken care of by Lucile, not Gabrielle.

History books (and the novels based on them) are clearly wrong in stating that it was Gabrielle who cried and fainted. Where did the error occur? Some biographers (and novelists) often use this (erroneous) description to explain her character, claiming that Gabrielle was a weak and unhappy lady, as Lucile writes, so she died in 1793. But if these are all statements about others, then there is no evidence at all for this description. (Besides, both her mother (or her mother-in-law) and Kéralio, who actually cried or fainted, survived the Revolution and did not die prematurely.)

I also found two manuscripts of the same content in the archives, one in small bold type as shown above, and the other in a more legible manuscript that appears to be a clean copy. As far as I can tell from Philippe Lejeune's transcription, the former is probably the original version of Lucile's diary. (Unless I'm missing something, however, Lejeune makes no mention of the latter).

I'm still curious about the clean version; the editor of the 1834 edition says in the preface that Lucile's mother entrusted him with the manuscript, and I assume it wasn't included. (It is hard to imagine that the editors read this before editing. This is easy to read even for me, a non-native alphabetical language speaker and not a manuscript scholar, so it would be odd for a 19th-century French person to misread it.)

I thought someone (Lucile's family?) had transcribed it for publication in the late 18th or 19th century, so I was surprised that no later historian or anyone else seems to have referred to this version. (I can't determine whether Lejeune saw it or not, as there are passages where his interpretation differs from it.) I'm not sure if it was once scattered and found again, or if someone tried to make a revised version (before Lejeune) after the 1834 edition.

Don’t know if you’ve already seen it when digging around in the BHVP archives, but here we have this unpublished letter written by Lucile regarding her activities during the Flight to Varennes (Hervé Leuwers dates it to either June 24 or June 25 1791) where Gabrielle appears (on the first page Lucile mentions how she would throw herself around her neck whenever they got to hear good news). I’m not particulary good at transcribing, so I can’t read that much from it, but perhaps you’d like to try?

I also stumbled upon Louise de Kéralio paying homage to Gabrielle’s memory at the Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes a few days after her death, reported in the journal Le Créole patriote:

Sorry I keep sending asks about her memoirs but do you have any idea what the “strumpets of the committee” is about? The notation by the publisher just makes me more confused.

I've just seen a post which reminded me that today (22nd December) is Couthon's birthday.