on the look-out for some profitable speculation. At one time he wanted me to join him in renting several houses, then building in the Rue Montholon, to underlet them afterwards. We found the demands of the landlords extravagant—everything failed.
At the same time he was soliciting employment at the War Office, and I at the office of Foreign Affairs. I was for the moment the luckier of the two.
While we were spending our time in a somewhat vagabond way,
—[It was before the 20th of June that in our frequent excursions around Paris we went to St. Cyr to see his sister Marianne (Elisa). We returned to dine alone at Trianon.—Bourrienne.]—
the 20th of June arrived. We met by appointment at a restaurateur's in the Rue St. Honore, near the Palais Royal, to take one of our daily rambles. On going out we saw approaching, in the direction of the market, a mob, which Bonaparte calculated at five or six thousand men. They were all in rags, ludicrously armed with weapons of every description, and were proceeding hastily towards the Tuilleries, vociferating all kinds of gross abuse. It was a collection of all that was most vile and abject in the purlieus of Paris. "Let us follow the mob," said Bonaparte. We got the start of them, and took up our station on the terrace of the banks of the river. It was there that he witnessed the scandalous scenes which took place; and it would be difficult to describe the surprise and indignation which they excited in him. When the King showed himself at the windows overlooking the garden, with the red cap, which one of the mob had put on his head, he could no longer repress his indignation. "Che coglione!" he loudly exclaimed. "Why have they let in all that rabble! They should sweep off four or five hundred of them with the cannon; the rest would then set off fast enough."
When we sat down to dinner, which I paid for, as I generally did, for I was the richer of the two, he spoke of nothing but the scene we had witnessed. He discussed with great good sense the causes and consequences of this unrepressed insurrection. He foresaw and developed with sagacity all that would ensue. He was not mistaken. The 10th of August soon arrived. I was then at Stuttgart, where I was appointed Secretary of Legation.
At St. Helena Bonaparte said, "On the news of the attack of the Tuilleries, on the 10th of August, I hurried to Fauvelet, Bourrienne's brother, who then kept a furniture warehouse at the Carrousel." This is partly correct. My brother was connected with what was termed an 'enterprise d'encan national', where persons intending to quit France received an advance of money, on depositing any effects which they wished to dispose of, and which were sold for them immediately. Bonaparte had some time previously pledged his watch in this way.
After the fatal 10th of August Bonaparte went to Corsica, and did not return till 1793. Sir Walter Scott says that after that time he never saw Corsica again. This is a mistake, as will be shown when I speak of his return from Egypt.
—[Sir Walter appears to have collected his information for the Life of Napoleon only from those libels and vulgar stories which gratified the calumnious spirit and national hatred. His work is written with excessive negligence, which, added to its numerous errors, shows how much respect he must have entertained for his readers. It would appear that his object was to make it the inverse of his novels, where everything is borrowed from history. I have been assured that Marshal Macdonald having offered to introduce Scott to some generals who could have furnished him with the most accurate, information respecting military events, the glory of which they had shared, Sir Walter replied, "I thank you, but I shall collect my information from unprofessional reports."—Bourrienne.]—
Having been appointed Secretary of Legation to Stuttgart, I set off for that place on the 2d of August, and I did not again see my ardent young friend until 1795. He told me that my departure accelerated his for Corsica. We separated, as may be supposed, with but faint hopes of ever meeting again.
By a decree of the 28th of March of 1793, all French agents abroad were ordered to return to France, within three months, under pain of being regarded as emigrants. What I had witnessed before my departure for Stuttgart, the excitement in which I had left the public mind, and the well-known consequences of events of this kind, made me fear that I should be compelled to be either an accomplice or a victim in the disastrous scenes which were passing at home. My disobedience of the law placed my name on the list of emigrants.
It has been said of me, in a biographical publication, that "it was as remarkable as it was fortunate for Bourrienne that, on his return, he got his name erased from the list of emigrants of the department of the Yonne, on which it had been inscribed during his first journey to Germany. This circumstance has been interpreted in several different ways, which are not all equally favourable to M. de Bourrienne."
I do not understand what favourable interpretations can be put upon a statement entirely false. General Bonaparte repeatedly applied for the erasure of my name, from the month of April 1797, when I rejoined him at Leoben, to the period of the signature of the treaty of Campo-Formio; but without success. He desired his brother Louis, Berthier, Bernadotte, and others, when he sent them to the Directory, to urge my erasure; but in vain. He complained of this inattention to his wishes to Bottot, when he came to Passeriano, after the 18th Fructidor. Bottot, who was secretary to Barras, was astonished that I was not erased, and he made fine promises of what he would do. On his return to France he wrote to Bonaparte: "Bourrienne is erased." But this was untrue. I was not erased until November 1797, upon the reiterated solicitations of General Bonaparte.
It was during my absence from France that Bonaparte, in the rank of 'chef de bataillon', performed his first campaign, and contributed so materially to the recapture of Toulon. Of this period of his life I have no personal knowledge, and therefore I shall not speak of it as an eye-witness. I shall merely relate some facts which fill up the interval between 1793 and 1795, and which I have collected from papers which he himself delivered to me. Among these papers is a little production, entitled 'Le Souper de Beaucaire', the copies of which he bought up at considerable expense, and destroyed upon his attaining the Consulate. This little pamphlet contains principles very opposite to those he wished to see established in 1800, a period when extravagant ideas of liberty were no longer the fashion, and when Bonaparte entered upon a system totally the reverse of those republican principles professed in 'Le Souper de Beaucaire.
—[This is not, as Sir Walter says, a dialogue between Marat and a Federalist, but a conversation between a military officer, a native of Nismes, a native of Marseilles, and a manufacturer from Montpellier. The latter, though he takes a share in the conversation, does not say much. 'Le Souper de Beaucaire' is given at full length in the French edition of these Memoirs, tome i. pp. 319-347; and by Iung, tome ii. p. 354, with the following remarks: "The first edition of 'Le Souper de Beaucaire' was issued at the cost of the Public Treasury, in August 1798. Sabin Tournal, its editor, also then edited the 'Courrier d'Avignon'. The second edition only appeared twenty-eight years afterwards, in 1821, preceded by an introduction by Frederick Royou (Paris: Brasseur Aine, printer, Terrey, publisher, in octavo). This pamphlet did not make any sensation at the time it appeared. It was only when Napoleon became Commandant of the Army of Italy that M. Loubet, secretary and corrector of the press for M. Tournal, attached some value to the manuscript, and showed it to several persona. Louis Bonaparte, later, ordered several copies from M. Aurel. The pamphlet, dated 29th duly 1793, is in the form of a dialogue between an officer of the army, a citizen of Nismes, a manufacturer of Montpellier, and a citizen of Marseilles. Marseilles was then in a state of insurrection against the Convention. Its forces had seized Avignon, but had been driven out by the army of Cartesna, which was about to attack Marseilles itself." In the dialogue the officer gives most excellent military advice to the representative of Marseilles on the impossibility of their resisting the old soldiers of Carteaux. The Marseilles citizen argues but feebly, and is alarmed at the officer's representations; while his threat to call in the Spaniards turns the other speakers against him. Even Colonel Iung says, tome ii. p. 372, "In these concise judgments is felt the decision of the master and of the man of
