do you allude?"--"To pamphlets which are publicly
circulated."--"Name them!"--"You know them as well as I do."

--[The Parallel between Caesar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte, of which I
shall speak a little farther on, is here alluded to.--Bourrienne.]--

After a long and angry ebullition the First Consul abruptly dismissed the
Council. He observed that he would not be duped; that the villains were
known; that they were Septembrizers, the hatchers of every mischief. He
had said at a sitting three days before, "If proof should fail, we must
take advantage of the public excitement. The event is to me merely the
opportunity. They shall be banished for the 2d September, for the 31st
May, for Baboeuf's conspiracy--or anything else."

On leaving one of the sittings of the Council, at which the question of a
special tribunal had been discussed, he told me that he had been a little
ruffled; that he had said a violent blow must be struck; that blood must
be spilt; and that as many of the guilty should be shot as there had been
victims of the explosion (from fifteen to twenty); that 200 should be
banished, and the Republic purged of these scoundrels.

The arbitrariness and illegality of the proceeding were so evident that
the 'Senatus-consulte' contained no mention of the transactions of the 3d
Nivose, which was very remarkable. It was, however, declared that the
measure of the previous day had been adopted with a view to the
preservation of the Constitution. This was promising.

The First Consul manifested the most violent hatred of the Jacobins;
for this he could not have been blamed if under the title of Jacobins he
had not comprised every devoted advocate of public liberty. Their
opposition annoyed him and he could never pardon them for having presumed
to condemn his tyrannical acts, and to resist the destruction of the
freedom which he had himself sworn to defend, but which he was
incessantly labouring to overturn. These were the true motives of his
conduct; and, conscious of his own faults, he regarded with dislike those
who saw and disapproved of them. For this reason he was more afraid of
those whom he called Jacobins than of the Royalists.

I am here recording the faults of Bonaparte, but I excuse him; situated
as he was, any other person would have acted in the same way. Truth now
reached him with difficulty, and when it was not agreeable he had no
disposition to hear it. He was surrounded by flatterers; and, the