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and account of her husband's arrest—Constitution of the year III—

       The 13th Vendemiaire—Bonaparte appointed second in command of the

       army of the interior—Eulogium of Bonaparte by Barras, and its

       consequences—St. Helena manuscript.

      General Bonaparte returned to Paris, where I also arrived from Germany shortly after him. Our intimacy was resumed, and he gave me an account of, all that had passed in the campaign of the south. He frequently alluded to the persecutions he had suffered, and he delivered to me the packet of papers noticed in the last chapter, desiring me to communicate their contents to my friends. He was very anxious, he said, to do away with the supposition that he was capable of betraying his country, and, under the pretence of a mission to Genoa, becoming a SPY on the interests of France. He loved to talk over his military achievements at Toulon and in Italy. He spoke of his first successes with that feeling of pleasure and gratification which they were naturally calculated to excite in him.

      The Government wished to send him to La Vendée, with the rank of brigadier-general of infantry. Bonaparte rejected this proposition on two grounds. He thought the scene of action unworthy of his talents, and he regarded his projected removal from the artillery to the infantry as a sort of insult. This last was his most powerful objection, and was the only one he urged officially. In consequence of his refusal to accept the appointment offered him, the Committee of Public Safety decreed that he should be struck off the list of general officers.

      —[This statement as to the proposed transfer of Bonaparte to the

       infantry, his disobedience to the order, and his consequent

       dismissal, is fiercely attacked in the 'Erreurs', tome i. chap. iv.

       It is, however, correct in some points; but the real truths about

       Bonaparte's life at this time seem so little known that it may be

       well to explain the whole matter. On the 27th of March 1795

       Bonaparte, already removed from his employment in the south, was

       ordered to proceed to the army of the west to command its artillery

       as brigadier-general. He went as far as Paris, and then lingered

       there, partly on medical certificate. While in Paris he applied, as

       Bourrienne says, to go to Turkey to organise its artillery. His

       application, instead of being neglected, as Bourrienne says, was

       favourably received, two members of the 'Comite de Saint Public'

       putting on its margin most favorable reports of him; one, Jean

       Debry, even saying that he was too distinguished an officer to be

       sent to a distance at such a time. Far from being looked on as the

       half-crazy fellow Bourrienne considered him at that time, Bonaparte

       was appointed, on the 21st of August 1795, one of four generals

       attached as military advisers to the Committee for the preparation

       of warlike operations, his own department being a most important

       one. He himself at the time tells Joseph that he is attached to the

       topographical bureau of the Comite de Saint Public, for the

       direction of the armies in the place of Carnot. It is apparently

       this significant appointment to which Madame Junot, wrongly dating

       it, alludes as "no great thing" (Junot, vol. i, p. 143). Another

       officer was therefore substituted for him as commander of Roches

       artillery, a fact made use of in the Erreurs (p. 31) to deny his

       having been dismissed—But a general re-classification of the

       generals was being made. The artillery generals were in excess of

       their establishment, and Bonaparte, as junior in age, was ordered on

       13th June to join Hoche's army at Brest to command a brigade of

       infantry. All his efforts to get the order cancelled failed, and as

       he did not obey it he was struck off the list of employed general

       officers on the 15th of September 1795, the order of the 'Comite de

       Salut Public' being signed by Cambacérès, Berber, Merlin, and

       Boissy. His application to go to Turkey still, however, remained;

       and it is a curious thing that, on the very day he was struck off

       the list, the commission which had replaced the Minister of War

       recommended to the 'Comite de Saint Public' that he and his two

       aides de camp, Junot and Livrat, with other officers, under him,

       should be sent to Constantinople. So late as the 29th of September,

       twelve days later, this matter was being considered, the only

       question being as to any departmental objections to the other

       officers selected by him, a point which was just being settled. But

       on the 13th Vendemiaire (5th October 1795), or rather on the night

       before, only nineteen days after his removal, he was appointed

       second in command to Barras, a career in France was opened to him,

       and Turkey was no longer thought of.

       Thiers (vol. iv, p. 326) and most writers, contemporary and

       otherwise, say that Aubry gave the order for his removal from the

       list. Aubry, himself a brigadier-general of artillery, did not

       belong to the 'Comite de Salut Public' at the time Bonaparte was

       removed from the south; and he had left the Comite early is August,

       that is, before the order striking Bonaparte off was given. Aubry

       was, however, on the Comite in June 1795, and signed the order,

       which probably may have originated from him, for the transfer of

       Bonaparte to the infantry. It will be seen that, in the ordinary

       military sense of the term, Napoleon was only in Paris without

       employment from the 15th of September to the 4th or 6th of October

       1796; all the rest of the time in Paris he had a command which he

       did not choose to take up. The distress under which Napoleon is

       said to have laboured in pecuniary matters was probably shared by

       most officers at that time; see 'Erreurs', tome i. p. 32. This

       period is fully described in Iung, tome ii. p. 476, and tome iii.

       pp. 1–93.]—

      Deeply mortified at this unexpected stroke, Bonaparte retired into private life, and found himself doomed to an inactivity very uncongenial with his ardent character. He lodged in the Rue du Mail, in an hotel near the Place des Victoires, and we recommenced the sort of life we had led in 1792, before his departure for Corsica. It was not without a struggle that he determined to await patiently the removal of the prejudices which were cherished against him by men in power; and he hoped that, in the perpetual changes which were taking place, those men might be superseded by others more favourable to him. He frequently dined and spent the evening with me and my elder brother; and his pleasant conversation and manners made the hours pass away very agreeably. I called on him almost every morning, and I met at his lodgings several persons who were distinguished at the time; among others Salicetti, with whom he used to maintain very animated conversations, and who would often solicit a private interview with him. On one occasion Salicetti paid him three thousand francs, in assignats, as the price

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