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Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 07 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 94 of 105 (89%)
composure and modest confidence, though flashes of just indignation would
occasionally burst from him. I recollect the effect he produced upon the
Court and the auditors at one of the sittings, when the President had
accused him of the design of making himself Dictator. He exclaimed,
"I Dictator! What, make myself Dictator at the head of the partisans of
the Bourbons! Point out my partisans! My partisans would naturally be
the soldiers of France, of whom I have commanded nine-tenths, and saved
more than fifty thousand. These are the partisans I should look to! All
my aides de camp, all the officers of my acquaintance, have been
arrested; not the shadow of a suspicion could be found against any of
them, and they have been set at liberty. Why, then, attribute to me the
madness of aiming to get myself made Dictator by the aid of the adherents
of the old French Princes, of persons who have fought in their cause
since 1792? You allege that these men, in the space of four-and-twenty
hours, formed the project of raising me to the Dictatorship! It is
madness to think of it! My fortune and my pay have been alluded to; I
began the world with nothing; I might have had by this time fifty
millions; I have merely a house and a bit of ground; as to my pay, it is
forty thousand francs. Surely that sum will not be compared with my
services."

During the trial Moreau delivered a defence, which I knew had been
written by his friend Garat, whose eloquence I well remember was always
disliked by Bonaparte. Of this I had a proof on the occasion of a grand
ceremony which took place in the Place des Victoires, on laying the first
stone of a monument which was to have been erected to the memory of
Desaix, but which was never executed. The First Consul returned home in
very ill-humour, and said to me, "Bourrienne, what a brute that Garat is!
What a stringer of words! I have been obliged to listen to him for
three-quarters of an hour. There are people who never know when to hold
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