As the distance between the hostile bodies was apparently from twelve to fifteen miles, the French admiral’s observations may have failed to recognize that the enemy, by backing his topsails, had offered a fair challenge; else, in his report of this very commonplace occurrence, he could scarcely have used, concerning the movement of heading south, the expression, prit chasse, which, whether rendered “retired,” or “retreated,” or, as Nelson did, “ran away,” was a misrepresentation of the facts, and heightened by the assertion that he pursued till nightfall, and next morning could not see the enemy.  Writing to Elliot four days after the affair happened, Nelson mentioned casually his view of the matter.  “Monsieur La Touche came out with eight sail of the line and six frigates, cut a caper off Sepet, and went in again.  I brought-to for his attack, although I did not believe anything was meant serious, but merely a gasconade.”  “On the morning of the 15th,” he tells Acton on the same day, “I believe I may call it, we chased him into Toulon.”  His purpose evidently was, as has been shown, to fight, if the enemy meant business, to leeward of the port, and far enough off to give Bickerton a chance to come up.  Great was his wrath, two months later, when Latouche’s statement reached him, and he found that not only no mention was made of the relative numbers, but that the offensive expression quoted had been used.  “I do assure you,” he wrote to the Admiralty, enclosing a copy of the day’s log, “I know not what to say, except by a flat contradiction; for if my character is not established by this time for not being apt to run away, it is not worth my time to attempt to put the world right.”  He might well have rested there,—­an imputation that might have injured an untried man could provoke only a smile when levelled at his impregnable renown; but his ruffled mind would not let him keep quiet, and in private correspondence he vented his rage in terms similar to those used of the Danish commodore after Copenhagen.  “You will have seen Monsieur La Touche’s letter of how he chased me and how I ran.  I keep it; and, by G—­d, if I take him, he shall eat it.”  He is a “poltroon,” a “liar,” and a “miscreant.”  It may be added that no admiral, whether a Nelson or not, could have abandoned the “Excellent” under the conditions.

Immediately after this abortive affair, Nelson, convinced by it that something more than a taunt was needed to bring his enemy under his guns, stationed frigates at the Hyeres, and to cruise thence to the eastward as far as Cape Taillat, to intercept the commerce between Italy and Toulon and Marseilles.  For this purpose he had recommended, and the Government had ordered, a blockade of all Genoese ports including Spezia; Genoa, now the Ligurian Republic, being considered as much France as Toulon.  Nothing, he said, could distress France more.  This blockade had been but feebly enforced, owing to the lack of small cruisers;