uch at least is
the testimony of Marie Robespierre, with whom Buonaparte's sisters
were then intimate. "Buonaparte," she said, "was a republican: I will
even say that he took the side of the Mountain: at least, that was the
impression left on my mind by his opinions when I was at Nice.... His
admiration for my elder brother, his friendship for my younger
brother, and perhaps also the interest inspired by my misfortunes,
gained for me, under the Consulate, a pension of 3,600 francs."[29]
Equally noteworthy is the later declaration of Napoleon that
Robespierre was the "scapegoat of the Revolution." [30] It appears
probable, then, that he shared the Jacobinical belief that the Terror
was a necessary though painful stage in the purification of the body
politic. His admiration of the rigour of Lycurgus, and his dislike of
all superfluous luxury, alike favour this supposition; and as he
always had the courage of his convictions, it is impossible to
conceive him clinging to the skirts of the terrorists merely from a
mean hope of prospective favours. That is the alternative explanation
of 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
Austrian