l 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]

[Footnote 49: Correspondance, I, No. 40.]

The meaning of this missive is recondite; perhaps it is this: Mme.
Permon, I loved you,