enowned as his wife, and who,
divorced a second and married a third time, died as the Princesse de
Chimay. The ninth of Thermidor saved them both from the guillotine. In
the days immediately subsequent they had abundant opportunity to
display their light but clever natures. Mme. Beauharnais, as well as
her friend, unfolded her wings like a butterfly as she escaped from
the bars of her cell. Being a Creole, and having matured early, her
physical charms were already fading. Her spirit, too, had reached and
passed its zenith; for in her letters of that time she describes
herself as listless. Nevertheless, in those very letters there is some
sprightliness, and considerable ability of a certain kind. A few weeks
after her liberation, having apprenticed Eugene and Hortense to an
upholsterer and a dressmaker respectively,[59] she was on terms of
intimacy with Barras so close as to be considered suspicious, while
her daily intercourse was with those who had brought her husband to a
terrible end. In a luxurious and licentious society, she was a
successful intriguer in matters both of politics and of pleasure;
versed in the arts of coquetry and dress, she became for the needy and
ambitious a successful intermediary with those in power. Preferring,
as she rather ostentatiously asserted, to be guided by another's will,
she gave little thought to her children, or to the sad legacy of her
husband's good name. She emulated, outwardly at least, the
unprincipled worldliness of those about her, although her friends
believed her kind-hearted and virtuous. Whatever her true nature was,
she had influence among the foremost men of that gay set which was
imitating the court circles of old, and an influence which had become
not altogether agreeable to the immoral Provencal noble who
entertained and supported the giddy coterie. Perhaps the extravagance
of the languid Creole was as trying to Barras as it became afterward
to her second husband.

[Footnote 59: See Pulitzer: Une idylle sous Napoleon I.]

The meeting of Napoleon and Josephine was an event of the first
importance.[60] His own account twice relates that a beautiful and
tearful boy presented himself, soon after the disarmament of the
sections, to the commander of the city, and asked for the sword of his
father. The request was granted, and next day the boy's mother, Mme.
Beauharnais, came to thank the general for his kindly act of
restitution. Captivated by her grace, B