your heart, a flame which
consumes me? Ah, this very night, I knew your portrait was not you!
Thou leavest at noon; three hours more, and I shall see thee again.
Meantime, _mio dolce amor_, a thousand kisses; but give me none, for
they set me all afire." What genuine and reckless passion! The "thou"
and "you" maybe strangely jumbled; the grammar may be mixed and bad;
the language may even be somewhat indelicate, as it sounds in other
passages than those given: but the meaning would be strong enough
incense for the most exacting woman.

On February ninth, 1796, their banns were proclaimed; on March second
the bridegroom received his bride's dowry in his own appointment, on
Carnot's motion, not on that of Barras, as chief of the Army of Italy,
still under the name of Buonaparte;[63] on the seventh he was handed
his commission; on the ninth the marriage ceremony was performed by
the civil magistrate; and on the eleventh the husband started for his
post. In the marriage certificate at Paris the groom gives his age as
twenty-eight, but in reality he was not yet twenty-seven; the bride,
who was thirty-three, gives hers as not quite twenty-nine. Her name is
spelled Detascher, his Bonaparte. A new birth, a new baptism, a new
career, a new start in a new sphere, Corsica forgotten, Jacobinism
renounced, General and Mme. Bonaparte made their bow to the world. The
ceremony attracted no public attention, and was most unceremonious, no
member of the family from either side being present. Madame Mere, in
fact, was very angry, and foretold that with such a difference in age
the union would be barren.

[Footnote 63: Carnot thoroughly understood and
appreciated the genius shown in Buonaparte's plan for an
Italian campaign, and converted the Directorate to his
opinion. They sent a copy to Scherer, then in command at
Nice, and he returned it in a temper, declaring that the
man who made such a plan had better come and work it.
The Directory took him at his word.]

There was one weird omen which, read aright, distinguishes the
otherwise commonplace occurrence. In the wedding-ring were two
words--"To destiny." The words were ominous, for they were indicative
of a policy long since formed and never afterward concealed, being a
pretense to deceive Josephine as well as the rest of the world: the
giver was about to assume a new role,--that of the