Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 07 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 94 of 105 (89%)
page 94 of 105 (89%)
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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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