tatives sent from the
Convention to the army of the Alps, and Salicetti to the army of
Italy.]--

Laporte was not probably the most influential of the three, for Bonaparte
did not address his remonstrance to him. He was a fortnight under
arrest.

Had the circumstance occurred three weeks earlier, and had Bonaparte been
arraigned before the Committee of Public Safety previous to the 9th
Thermidor, there is every probability that his career would have been at
an end; and we should have seen perish on the scaffold, at the age of
twenty-five, the man who, during the twenty-five succeeding years, was
destined to astonish the world by his vast conceptions, his gigantic
projects, his great military genius, his extraordinary good fortune, his
faults, reverses, and final misfortunes.

It is worth while to remark that in the post-Thermidorian resolution just
alluded to no mention is made of Bonaparte's association with Robespierre
the younger. The severity with which he was treated is the more
astonishing, since his mission to Genoa was the alleged cause of it.
Was there any other charge against him, or had calumny triumphed over the
services he had rendered to his country? I have frequently conversed
with him on the subject of this adventure, and he invariably assured me
that he had nothing to reproach himself with, and that his defence, which
I shall subjoin, contained the pure expression of his sentiments, and the
exact truth.

In the following note, which he addressed to Albitte and Salicetti, he
makes no mention of Laporte. The copy which I possess is in the
handwriting of, Junot, with corrections in the General's hand. It
exhibits all the characteristics of Napoleon's writing: his short
sentences, his abrupt rather than concise style, sometimes his elevated
ideas, and always his plain good sense.

TO THE REPRESENTATIVES ALBITTE AND SALICETTI.

You have suspended me from my duties, put me under arrest, and declared
me to be suspected.

Thus I am disgraced before being judged, or indeed judged before being
heard.

In a revolutionary state there are two classes, the suspected and the
patriots.

When the first are aroused, general measures are adopted towards them for
the sake of security.

The oppression of the second class is a blow to public liberty. The
magistrate cannot condemn until after the fullest evidence and a
succession of facts. This leaves nothing to arbitrary decision.

To declare a p