"This conscience is quiet when I question it; do, therefore,
nothing, if you do not wish to compromise me. Adieu, dear Junot.
Farewell, and friendship." [Footnote: Abrantes, "Memoires," vol. i.,
p. 241.]
Meanwhile, notwithstanding his quiet conscience, Bonaparte was not
willing to meet his fate passively and silently, and, perchance, it
seemed to him that it was "not enough to be innocent," so as to be
saved from the guillotine. He therefore addressed a protest to both
representatives of the people who had ordered his arrest, and this
protest, which he dictated to his friend Junot, who had finally
succeeded in coming to Bonaparte, is so extraordinary and so
peculiar in its terseness of style, in its expressions of political
sentiment; it furnishes so important a testimony of the republican
democratic opinions of the young twenty-six-year-old general, that
we cannot but give here this document.
Bonaparte then dictated to his friend Junot as follows:
"To the representatives Salicetti and Albitte:
"You have deprived me of my functions, you have arrested me and
declared me suspected.
"I am, then, ruined without being condemned; or else, which is much
more correct, I am condemned without being heard.
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