as many different
transcribers, who heard it at different times. The final one, as given
by Las Cases, was corrected by Napoleon's own hand.[54] It runs as
follows: On the night of October third he was at the theater, but
hearing that Menou had virtually retreated before the wards, and was
to be arrested, he left and went to the meeting of the Convention,
where, as he stood among the spectators, he heard his own name
mentioned as Menou's successor. For half an hour he deliberated what
he should do if chosen. If defeated, he would be execrated by all
coming generations, while victory would be almost odious. How could he
deliberately become the scapegoat of so many crimes to which he had
been an utter stranger? Why go as an avowed Jacobin and in a few hours
swell the list of names uttered with horror? "On the other hand, if
the Convention be crushed, what becomes of the great truths of our
Revolution? Our many victories, our blood so often shed, are all
nothing but shameful deeds. The foreigner we have so thoroughly
conquered triumphs and overwhelms us with his contempt; an incapable
race, an overbearing and unnatural following, reappear triumphant,
throw up our crime to us, wreak their vengeance, and govern us like
helots by the hand of a stranger. Thus the defeat of the Convention
would crown the brow of the foreigner, and seal the disgrace and
slavery of our native land." Such thoughts, his youth, trust in his
own power and in his destiny, turned the balance.

[Footnote 54: Memorial de Sainte Helene, II, 246.]

Statements made under such circumstances are not proof; but there is
this much probability of truth in them, that if we imagine the old
Buonaparte in disgrace as of old, following as of old the promptings
of his curiosity, indifferent as of old to the success of either
principle, and by instinct a soldier as of old,--if we recall him in
this character, and remember that he is no longer a youthful Corsican
patriot, but a mature cosmopolitan consumed with personal
ambition,--we may surely conclude that he was perfectly impartial as
to the parties involved, leaned toward the support of the principles
of the Revolution as he understood them, and saw in the complications
of the hour a probable opening for his ambition. At any rate, his
conduct after October fourth seems to uphold this view. He was a
changed man, ardent, hopeful, and irrepressible, as he had ever been
when lucky; but now, besides, dar