Deputy to the Constituent Assembly, the National Convention, the Council of Five Hundred, then to the Legislative Body, Riffard Saint- Martin kept a journal in which he confided a great number of his political impressions, particularly beginning with the Convention. An exceptional account, the journal contributes to an understanding of the career of a deputy from the Ardeche, a man close to Boissy d’Anglas, who was indisputably a member the « party of the Girondins » that permitted him to be a member of Commission of Twelve in May 1793. But he avoided proscription, remained in the Convention, and went into hiding before joining the ranks of the Thermidorians, and expressing through his journal his rejection of the period of the Terror and those who personified it. At the same time, he remained a solid republican extremely hostile to royalism.