nd commentated by its author shortly after his return
from Genoa and Nice.[52] The great scholar was already as profoundly
impressed as a year later Carnot, and now the war commission. A few
days later the writer and author of the plan became aware of the
impression he had made: it seemed clear that he had a reality in hand
worth every possibility in the Orient. He therefore wrote to Joseph
that he was going to remain in Paris, explaining, as if incidentally,
that he could thus be on the lookout for any desirable vacancy in the
consular service, and secure it, if possible, for him.

[Footnote 52: Chaptal: Mes souvenirs sur Napoleon, p.
198.]

Dreams of another kind had supplanted in his mind all visions of
Oriental splendor; for in subsequent letters to the same
correspondent, written almost daily, he unfolds a series of rather
startling schemes, which among other things include a marriage, a town
house, and a country residence, with a cabriolet and three horses. How
all this was to come about we cannot entirely discover. The marriage
plan is clearly stated. Joseph had wedded one of the daughters of a
comparatively wealthy merchant. He was requested to sound his
brother-in-law concerning the other, the famous Desiree Clary, who
afterward became Mme. Bernadotte. Two of the horses were to be
supplied by the government in place of a pair which he might be
supposed to have possessed at Nice in accordance with the rank he then
held, and to have sold, according to orders, when sent on the maritime
expedition to Corsica. Where the third horse and the money for the
houses were to come from is inscrutable; but, as a matter of fact,
Napoleon had already left his shabby lodgings for better ones in
Michodiere street, and was actually negotiating for the purchase of a
handsome detached residence near that of Bourrienne, whose fortunes
had also been retrieved. The country-seat which the speculator had in
view, and for which he intended to bid as high as a million and a half
of francs, was knocked down to another purchaser for three millions
or, as the price of gold then was, about forty thousand dollars! So
great a personage as he now was must, of course, have a secretary, and
the faithful Junot had been appointed to the office.

The application for the horses turned out a serious matter, and
brought the adventurer once more to the verge of ruin. The story he
told was not plain, the records did not subs