women who meddle
with politics!'" Equality, ease, familiarity and companionship, vanish
at his approach. Eighteen months before this, on his appointment as
commander-in-chief of the army in Italy, Admiral Decres, who had known
him well at Paris,[1137] learns that he is to pass through Toulon: "I at
once propose to my comrades to introduce them, venturing to do so on my
acquaintance with him in Paris. Full of eagerness and joy, I start off.
The door opens and I am about to press forwards," he afterwards wrote,
"when the attitude, the look, and the tone of voice suffice to arrest
me. And yet there was nothing offensive about him; still, this was
enough. I never tried after that to overstep the line thus imposed on
me." A few days later, at Albenga,[1138] certain generals of division,
and among them Augereau, a vulgar, heroic old soldier, vain of his tall
figure and courage, arrive at headquarters, not well disposed toward the
little parvenu sent out to them from Paris. Recalling the description of
him which had been given to them, Augereau is abusive and insubordinate
beforehand: one of Barras' favorites, the Vendemiaire general, a street
general, "not yet tried out on the field of battle,[1139] hasn't a
friend, considered a loner because he is the only one who can thinks for
himself, looking peaky, said to be a mathematician and a dreamer!" They
enter, and Bonaparte keeps them waiting. At last he appears, with his
sword and belt on, explains the disposition of the forces, gives them
his orders, and dismisses them. Augereau has remained silent; It is only
when he gets out of doors does he recover himself and fall back on his
accustomed oaths. He admits to Massena that "that little bastard of a
general frightened him." He cannot "comprehend the ascendancy which made
him feel crushed right away."[1140]

Extraordinary and superior, made for command[1141] and for conquest,
singular and of an unique species, is the feeling of all his
contemporaries. Those who are most familiar with the histories of other
nations, Madame de Stael and, after her, Stendhal, go back to the
right sources to comprehend him, to the "petty Italian tyrants of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries," to Castruccio-Castracani, to the
Braccio of Mantua, to the Piccinino, the Malatestas of Rimini, and
the Sforzas of Milan. In their opinion, however, it is only a chance
analogy, a psychological resemblance. Really, however, and)historically
it is a positive