se the bloodshed.
Certainly the Convention acted with clemency in the hour of victory:
two only of the rebel leaders were put to death; and it is pleasing to
remember that when Menou was charged with treachery, Buonaparte used
his influence to procure his freedom.

Bourrienne states that in his later days the victor deeply regretted
his action in this day of Vendemiaire. The assertion seems
incredible. The "whiff of grapeshot" crushed a movement which could
have led only to present anarchy, and probably would have brought
France back to royalism of an odious type. It taught a severe lesson
to a fickle populace which, according to Mme. de Stael, was hungering
for the spoils of place as much as for any political object. Of all
the events of his post-Corsican life, Buonaparte need surely never
have felt compunctions for Vendemiaire.[34]

After four signal reverses in his career, he now enters on a path
strewn with glories. The first reward for his signal services to the
Republic was his appointment to be second in command of the army of
the interior; and when Barras resigned the first command, he took that
responsible post. But more brilliant honours were soon to follow, the
first of a social character, the second purely military.

Buonaparte had already appeared timidly and awkwardly at the _salon_
of the voluptuous Barras, where the fair but frail Madame
Tallien--Notre Dame de Thermidor she was styled--dazzled Parisian
society by her classic features and the uncinctured grace of her
attire. There he reappeared, not in the threadbare uniform that had
attracted the giggling notice of that giddy throng, but as the lion of
the society which his talents had saved. His previous attempts to gain
the hand of a lady had been unsuccessful. He had been refused, first
by Mlle. Clary, sister of his brother Joseph's wife, and quite
recently by Madame Permon. Indeed, the scarecrow young officer had not
been a brilliant match. But now he saw at that _salon_ a charming
widow, Josephine de Beauharnais, whose husband had perished in the
Terror. The ardour of his southern temperament, long repressed by his
privations, speedily rekindles in her presence: his stiff, awkward
manners thaw under her smiles: his silence vanishes when she praises
his military gifts: he admires her tact, her sympathy, her beauty: he
determines to marry her. The lady, on her part, seems to have been
somewhat terrified by her uncanny wooer: she comments questionin