September twenty-sixth that while Buonaparte was passing on his way to rejoin the Army of Italy, the authorities in charge of the siege changed his destination and put him in command of the heavy artillery to replace Dommartin, incapacitated for service by a wound. It has been hinted by both the suspicious and the credulous writers on the period that the young man was employed on some secret mission. This might be expected from those who attribute demonic qualities to the child of destiny from earliest infancy, but there is no slightest evidence to sustain the claim. Quite possibly the lad relapsed into the queer restless ways of earlier life. It is evident he was thwarted in his hope of transfer to the Army of the Rhine. Unwilling as he was to serve in Italy, he finally turned his lagging footsteps thither. Perhaps, as high authorities declare, it was at Marseilles that his compatriot Cervoni persuaded him to go as far at least as Toulon, though Salicetti and Buonaparte himself declared later that they met and arranged the matter at Nice. [Footnote 38: The very first impression appears to have been a reprint from the Courier d'Avignon: it was a cheap pamphlet of sixteen pages in the same type and on the paper as that used by the journal. The second impression was in twenty pages, printed by the public printer as a tract for the times, to be distributed throughout the near and remote neighborhood.]