his intimacy with young Robespierre. Some of his injudicious
admirers, in trying to disprove his complicity with the terrorists,
impale themselves on this horn of the dilemma. In seeking to clear
him from the charge of Terrorism, they stain him with the charge of
truckling to the terrorists. They degrade him from the level of St.
Just to that of Barrere.

A sentence in one of young Robespierre's letters shows that he never
felt completely sure about the young officer. After enumerating to his
brother Buonaparte's merits, he adds: "He is a Corsican, and offers
only the guarantee of a man of that nation who has resisted the
caresses of Paoli and whose property has been ravaged by that
traitor." Evidently, then, Robespierre regarded Buonaparte with some
suspicion as an insular Proteus, lacking those sureties, mental and
pecuniary, which reduced a man to dog-like fidelity.

Yet, however warily Buonaparte picked his steps along the slopes of
the revolutionary volcano, he was destined to feel the scorch of the
central fires. He had recently been intrusted with a mission to the
Genoese Republic, which was in a most difficult position. It was
subject to pressure from three sides; from English men-of-war that had
swooped down on a French frigate, the "Modeste," in Genoese waters;
and from actual invasion by the French on the west and by the
Austrians on the north. Despite the great difficulties of his task, the
young envoy bent the distracted Doge and Senate to his will. He
might, therefore, have expected gratitude from his adopted country;
but shortly after he returned to Nice he was placed under arrest, and
was imprisoned in a fort near Antibes.

The causes of this swift reverse of fortune were curiously complex.
The Robespierres had in the meantime been guillotined at Paris (July
28th, or Thermidor 10th); and this "Thermidorian" reaction alone would
have sufficed to endanger Buonaparte's head. But his position was
further imperilled by his recent strategic suggestions, which had
served to reduce to a secondary _role_ the French Army of the Alps.
The operations of that force had of late been strangely thwarted; and
its leaders, searching for the paralyzing influence, discovered it in
the advice of Buonaparte. Their suspicions against him were formulated
in a secret letter to the Committee of Public Safety, which stated
that the Army of the Alps had been kept inactive by the intrigues of
the younger Robespierre and of Ricord