Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XXI

No wonder the man was ill at ease. His worst fears were realized when the influence of the Mountain was wiped out,—Carnot, the organizer of victory, as he had been styled, being the only one of all the old leaders to escape. Salicetti was too prominent a partizan to be overlooked by the angry burghers. For a time he was concealed by Mme. Permon in her Paris home. He escaped the vengeance of his enemies in the disguise of her lackey, flying with her when she left for the south to seek refuge for herself and children. Even the rank and file among the members of the Mountain either fled or were arrested. That Buonaparte was unmolested appears to prove how cleverly he had concealed his connection with them. The story that in these days he proposed for the hand of Mme. Permon, though without any corroborative evidence, has an air of probability, partly in the consideration of a despair which might lead him to seek any support, even that of a wife as old as his mother, partly from the existence of a letter to the lady which, though enigmatical, displays an interesting mixture of wounded pride and real or pretended jealousy. The epistle is dated June eighteenth, 1795. He felt that she would think him duped, he explains, if he did not inform her that although she had not seen fit to give her confidence to him, he had all along known that she had Salicetti in hiding. Then follows an address to that countryman, evidently intended to clear the writer from all taint of Jacobinism, and couched in these terms: "I could have denounced thee, but did not, although it would have been but a just revenge so to do. Which has chosen the truer part? Go, seek in peace an asylum where thou canst return to better thoughts of thy country. My lips shall never utter thy name. Repent, and above all, appreciate my motives. This I deserve, for they are noble and generous." In these words to the political refugee he employs the familiar republican "thou"; in the peroration, addressed, like the introduction, to the lady herself, he recurs to the polite and distant "you." "Mme. Permon, my good wishes go with you as with your child. You are two feeble creatures with no defense. May Providence and the prayers of a friend be with you. Above all, be prudent and never remain in the large cities. Adieu. Accept my friendly greetings."[49]