at Rome, had been one of Pichegru’s aides de camp.  This young man, though he had obtained the rank of captain, resigned on the banishment of his general, and resumed the pencil, which he had lad aside for the sword.  Pichegru, while he was concealed in Paris; visited his former aide de camp, who insisted upon giving him an asylum; but Pichegru positively refused to accept M. Lagrenee’s offer, being determined not to commit a man who had already given him so strong a proof of friendship.  I learned this fact by a singular coincidence.  At this period Madame de Bourrienne wished to have a portrait of one of our children; she was recommended to M. Lagrenee, and he related the circumstance to her.

It was on the night of the 22d of February that Pichegru was arrested in the manner I have described.  The deceitful friend who gave him up was named Le Blanc, and he went to settle at Hamburg with the reward of his treachery, I had entirely lost sight of Pichegru since we left Brienne, for Pichegru was also a pupil of that establishment; but, being older than either Bonaparte or I, he was already a tutor when we were only scholars, and I very well recollect that it was he who examined Bonaparte in the four first rules of arithmetic.

Pichegru belonged to an agricultural family of Franche-Comte.  He had a relation, a minim,’ in that country.  The minim, who had the charge of educating the pupils of the Military School of Brienne, being very poor, and their poverty not enabling them to hold out much inducement to other persons to assist them, they applied to the minims of Franche-Comte.  In consequence of this application Pichegru’s relation, and some other minims, repaired to Brienne.  An aunt of Pichegru, who was a sister of the order of charity, accompanied them, and the care of the infirmary was entrusted to her.  This good woman took her nephew to Brienne with her, and he was educated at the school gratuitously.  As soon as his age permitted, Pichegru was made a tutor; but all, his ambition was to become a minim.  He was, however, dissuaded from that pursuit by his relation, and he adopted the military profession.  There is this further remarkable circumstance in the youth of Pichegru, that, though he was older by several years than Bonaparte, they were both made lieutenants of artillery at the same time.  What a difference in their destiny!  While the one was preparing to ascend a throne the other was a solitary prisoner in the dungeon of the Temple.

I had no motive to induce me to visit either the Temple or La Force, but I received at the time circumstantial details of what was passing in those prisons, particularly in the former; I went, however, frequently to St. Pelagie, where M. Carbonnet was confined.  As soon as I knew that he was lodged in that prison I set about getting an admission from Real, who smoothed all difficulties.  M. Carbonnet was detained two months in solitary confinement.  He was several times examined, but the interrogatories produced no result, and, notwithstanding the desire to implicate him in consequence of the known intimacy between him and Moreau, it was at last found impossible to put him on trial with the other parties accused.