gly on
his "violent tenderness almost amounting to frenzy": she notes
uneasily his "keen inexplicable gaze which imposes even on our
Directors": How would this eager nature, this masterful energy,
consort with her own "Creole nonchalance"? She did well to ask herself
whether the general's almost volcanic passion would not soon exhaust
itself, and turn from her own fading charms to those of women who
were his equals in age. Besides, when she frankly asked her own heart,
she found that she loved him not: she only admired him. Her chief
consolation was that if she married him, her friend Barras would help
to gain for Buonaparte the command of the Army of Italy. The advice of
Barras undoubtedly helped to still the questioning surmises of
Josephine; and the wedding was celebrated, as a civil contract, on
March 9th, 1796. With a pardonable coquetry, the bride entered her age
on the register as four years less than the thirty-four which had
passed over her: while her husband, desiring still further to lessen
the disparity, entered his date of birth as 1768.

A fortnight before the wedding, he had been appointed to command the
Army of Italy: and after a honeymoon of two days at Paris, he left his
bride to take up his new military duties. Clearly, then, there was
some connection between this brilliant fortune and his espousal of
Josephine. But the assertion that this command was the "dowry" offered
by Barras to the somewhat reluctant bride is more piquant than
correct. That the brilliance of Buonaparte's prospects finally
dissipated her scruples may be frankly admitted. But the appointment
to a command of a French army did not rest with Barras. He was only
one of the five Directors who now decided the chief details of
administration. His colleagues were Letourneur, Rewbell, La
Reveilliere-Lepeaux, and the great Carnot; and, as a matter of fact,
it was the last-named who chiefly decided the appointment in question.

He had seen and pondered over the plan of campaign which Buonaparte
had designed for the Army of Italy; and the vigour of the conception,
the masterly appreciation of topographical details which it displayed,
and the trenchant energy of its style had struck conviction to his
strategic genius. Buonaparte owed his command, not to a backstairs
intrigue, as was currently believed in the army, but rather to his own
commanding powers. While serving with the Army of Italy in 1794, he
had carefully studied the coast-line an