ing, overbearing, and self-confident
to a degree which those characteristic qualities had never reached
before.

His first care was to place on a footing of efficiency the Army of the
Interior, scattered in many departments, undisciplined and
disorganized; the next, to cow into submission all the low elements in
Paris, still hungry and fierce, by reorganizing the National Guard,
and forming a picked troop for the special protection of the
legislature; the next, to show himself as the powerful friend of
every one in disgrace, as a man of the world without rancor or
exaggerated partizanship. At the same time he plunged into
speculation, and sent sums incredibly large to various members of his
family, a single remittance of four hundred thousand francs being
mentioned in his letters. Lucien was restored to the arms of his
low-born but faithful and beloved wife, and sent to join his mother
and sisters in Marseilles; Louis was brought from Chalons, and made a
lieutenant; Jerome was put at school in Paris; and to Joseph a
consular post was assured. Putting aside all bashfulness, General
Buonaparte became a full-fledged society man and a beau. No social
rank was now strange to him; the remnants of the old aristocracy, the
wealthy citizens of Paris, the returning Girondists, many of whom had
become pronounced royalists, the new deputies, the officers who in
some turn of the wheel had, like himself, lost their positions, but
were now, through his favor, reinstated--all these he strove to court,
flatter, and make his own.

Such activity, of course, could not pass unnoticed. The new government
had been constituted without disturbance, the Directory chosen, and
the legislature installed. Of the five directors--Barras, Rewbell,
Carnot, Letourneaux de la Manche, and Larevelliere-Lepeaux,--all had
voted for the death of Louis XVI, and were so-called regicides; but,
while varying widely in character and ability, they were all,
excepting Barras, true to their convictions. They scarcely understood
how strong the revulsion of popular feeling had been, and, utterly
ignoring the impossibility of harmonious action among themselves,
hoped to exercise their power with such moderation as to win all
classes to the new constitution. They were extremely disturbed by the
course of the general commanding their army in seeking intimacy with
men of all opinions, but were unwilling to interpret it aright. Under
the Convention, the Army of the Interi