onaparte,
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 Vendee, 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 '