uonaparte was thenceforward her
slave. A cold critic must remember that in the first place there was
no disarmament of anybody after the events of October fifth, the only
action of the Convention which might even be construed into hostility
being a decree making emigrants ineligible for election to the
legislature under the new constitution; that in the second place this
story attributes to destiny what was really due to the friendship of
Barras, a fact which his beneficiary would have liked to forget or
conceal; and finally, that the beneficiary left another account in
which he confessed that he had first met his wife at Barras's house,
this being confirmed by Lucien in his memoirs. Of the passion there is
no doubt; it was a composite emotion, made up in part of sentiment, in
part of self-interest. Those who are born to rude and simple
conditions in life are often dazzled by the charmed etiquette and
mysterious forms of artificial society. Napoleon never affected to
have been born to the manner, nor did he ever pretend to have adopted
its exacting self-control, for he could not; although after the winter
of 1795 he frequently displayed a weak and exaggerated regard for
social conventions. It was not that he had need to assume a false and
superficial polish, or that he particularly cared to show his equality
with those accustomed to polite society; but that he probably
conceived the splendid display and significant formality of that
ancient nobility which had so cruelly snubbed him from the outset as
being, nevertheless, the best conceivable prop to a throne.

[Footnote 60: Memorial, II, 258; III, 402.]

Lucien looked on with interest, and thought that during the whole
winter his brother was rather courted than a suitor. In his memoirs he
naively wonders what Napoleon would have done in Asia,--either in the
Indian service of England, or against her in that of Russia, for in
his early youth he had also thought of that,--in fact, what he would
have done at all, without the protection of women, in which he so
firmly believed, if he had not, after the manner of Mohammed, found a
Kadijah at least ten years older than himself, by whose favor he was
set at the opening of a great career. There are hints, too, in various
contemporary documents and in the circumstances themselves that Barras
was an adroit match-maker. In a letter attributed to Josephine, but
without address, a bright light seems to be thrown on the