The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
No wonder the man was ill at ease. His worst fears were realized when the influence of the Mountain was wiped out—Carnot, the organizer of victory, as he had been styled, being the only one of all the old leaders to escape. Salicetti was too prominent a partizan to be overlooked by the angry burghers. For a time he was concealed by Mme. Permon in her Paris home. He escaped the vengeance of his enemies in the disguise of her lackey, flying with her when she left for the south to seek refuge for herself and children. Even the rank and file among the members of the Mountain either fled or were arrested. That Buonaparte was unmolested appears to prove how cleverly he had concealed his connection with them. The story that in these days he proposed for the hand of Mme. Permon, though without any corroborative evidence, has an air of probability, partly in the consideration of a despair which might lead him to seek any support, even that of a wife as old as his mother, partly from the existence of a letter to the lady which, though enigmatical, displays an interesting mixture of wounded pride and real or pretended jealousy. The epistle is dated June eighteenth, 1795. He felt that she would think him duped, he explains, if he did not inform her that although she had not seen fit to give her confidence to him, he had all along known that she had Salicetti in hiding. Then follows an address to that countryman, evidently intended to clear the writer from all taint of Jacobinism, and couched in these terms: "I could have denounced thee, but did not, although it would have been but a just revenge so to do. Which has chosen the truer part? Go, seek in peace an asylum where thou canst return to better thoughts of thy country. My lips shall never utter thy name. Repent, and above all, appreciate my motives. This I deserve, for they are noble and generous." In these words to the political refugee he employs the familiar republican "thou"; in the peroration, addressed, like the introduction, to the lady herself, he recurs to the polite and distant "you." "Mme. Permon, my good wishes go with you as with your child. You are two feeble creatures with no defense. May Providence and the prayers of a friend be with you. Above all, be prudent and never remain in the large cities. Adieu. Accept my friendly greetings."[49]
The meaning of this missive is recondite; perhaps it is this: Mme. Permon, I loved you, and could have ruined the rival who is your protégé with a clear conscience, for he once did me foul wrong, as he will acknowledge. But farewell. I bear you no grudge. Or else it may announce another change in the political weather by the veering of the cock. As a good citizen, despising the horrors of the past, I could have denounced you, Salicetti. I did not, for I recalled old times and your helplessness, and wished to heap coals of fire on your head, that you might see the error of your way. The latter interpretation finds support in the complete renunciation of Jacobinism which the writer made soon afterward, and in his subsequent labored explanation that in the "Supper of Beaucaire" he had not identified himself with the Jacobin soldier (so far an exact statement of fact), but had wished only by a dispassionate presentation of facts to show the hopeless case of Marseilles, and to prevent useless bloodshed.
CHAPTER XXII.
Bonaparte the General of the Convention[50].
Disappointments—Another Furlough—Connection with Barras—Official Society in Paris—Buonaparte as a Beau—Condition of His Family—A Political General—An Opening in Turkey—Opportunities in Europe—Social Advancement—Official Degradation—Schemes for Restoration—Plans of the Royalists—The Hostility of Paris to the Convention—Buonaparte, General of the Convention Troops—His Strategy.
1795.
The overhauling of the army list with the subsequent reassignment of officers turned out ill for Buonaparte. Aubry, the head of the committee, appears to have been utterly indifferent to him, displaying no ill will, and certainly no active good will, toward the sometime Jacobin, whose name, moreover, was last on the list of artillery officers in the order of seniority. According to the regulations, when one arm of the service was overmanned, the superfluous officers were to be transferred to another. This was now the case with the artillery, and Buonaparte, as a supernumerary, was on June thirteenth again ordered to the west, but this time only as a mere infantry general of brigade. He appears to have felt throughout life more vindictiveness toward Aubry, the man whom he believed to have been the author of this particular misfortune, than toward any other person with whom he ever came in contact. In this rigid scrutiny of the army list, exaggerated pretensions of service and untruthful testimonials were no longer accepted. For this reason Joseph also had already lost his position, and was about to settle with his family in Genoa, while Louis was actually sent back to school, being ordered to Châlons. Poor Lucien, overwhelmed in the general ruin of the radicals, and with a wife and child dependent on him, was in despair. The other members of the family were temporarily destitute, but self-helpful.
In this there was nothing new; but, for all that, the monotony of the situation must have been disheartening. Napoleon's resolution was soon taken. He was either really ill from privation and disappointment, or soon became so. Armed with a medical certificate, he applied for and received a furlough. This step having been taken, the next, according to the unchanged and familiar instincts of the man, was to apply under the law for mileage to pay his expenses on the journey which he had taken as far as Paris in pursuance of the order given him on March twenty-ninth to proceed to his post in the west. Again, following the precedents of his life, he calculated mileage not from Marseilles, whence he had really started, but from Nice, thus largely increasing the amount which he asked for, and in due time received. During his leave several projects occupied his busy brain. The most important were a speculation in the sequestered lands of the emigrants and monasteries, and the writing of two monographs—one a history of events from the ninth of Fructidor, year II (August twenty-sixth, 1794), to the beginning of year IV (September twenty-third, 1795), the other a memoir on the Army of Italy. The first notion was doubtless due to the frenzy for speculation, more and more rife, which was now comparable only to that which prevailed in France at the time of Law's Mississippi scheme or in England during the South Sea Bubble. It affords an insight into financial conditions to know that a gold piece of twenty francs was worth seven hundred and fifty in paper. A project for purchasing a certain property as a good investment for his wife's dowry was submitted to Joseph, but it failed by the sudden repeal of the law under which such purchases were made. The two themes were both finished, and another, "A Study in Politics: being an Inquiry into the Causes of Troubles and Discords," was sketched, but never completed. The memoir on the Army of Italy was virtually the scheme for offensive warfare which he laid before the younger Robespierre; it was now revised, and sent to the highest military power—the new central committee appointed as a substitute for the Committee of Safety. These occupations were all very well, but the furlough was rapidly expiring, and nothing had turned up. Most opportunely, the invalid had a relapse, and was able to secure an extension of leave until August fourth, the date on which a third of the committee on the reassignment of officers would retire, among them the hated Aubry.
Speaking at St. Helena of these days, he said: "I lived in the Paris streets without employment. I had no social habits, going only into the set at the house of Barras, where I was well received. … I was there because there was nothing to be had elsewhere. I attached myself to Barras because I knew no one else. Robespierre was dead; Barras was playing a rôle: I had to attach myself to somebody and something." It will not be forgotten that Barras and Fréron had been Dantonists when they were at the siege of Toulon with Buonaparte. After the events of Thermidor they had forsworn Jacobinism altogether, and were at present in alliance with the moderate elements of Paris society. Barras's rooms in the Luxembourg were the center of all that was gay and dazzling in that corrupt and careless world. They were, as a matter of course, the resort of the most beautiful and brilliant women, influential, but not over-scrupulous. Mme. Tallien, who has been called "the goddess of Thermidor," was the queen of the coterie; scarcely less beautiful and gracious were the widow Beauharnais and Mme. Récamier. Barras had been a noble; the instincts of his class made him a delightful host.
What Napoleon saw and experienced he wrote to the faithful Joseph. The letters are a truthful transcript of his emotions, the key-note of which is admiration for the Paris women. "Carriages and the gay world reappear, or rather no more recall as after a long dream that they have