The Life Of Nelson, Volume II.

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 leveled 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 Hyères, 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.