d shed the fulness
of its rays over the whole world. Perhaps, the secret voices which
whispered in his breast of a dazzling future, and a fabulous career of
military glory, had already announced the rising of his star.

So Buonaparte lived on in Paris, and waited. He there passed quiet,
retired, and inactive days, associating with a few devoted friends only,
who aided him, with delicate tact, in his restricted circumstances. For
Buonaparte was poor; he had lost his limited means in the tempests of
the revolution, and all that he possessed consisted of the laurels he
had won on the battle-field, and his half pay as a brigadier-general.
But, like the Viscountess de Beauharnais, Napoleon had some true friends
who deemed it an honor to receive him as a guest at their table, and
also, like Josephine, he was too poor to bring his wheaten loaf with him
to the dinners that he attended, as was then the prevailing custom. He
often dined, in company with his brother Louis, at the house of his
boyhood's friend Bourrienne, and his future secretary was at that time
still his host, favored of the gods. The young general, instead of, like
his brother, bringing his wheaten loaf, brought only his ration, which
was rye-bread, and this he always abandoned to his brother Louis, who
was very fond of it, while Madame Bourrienne took care that he should
invariably find his supply of white, bread at his plate. She had managed
to get some flour smuggled into Paris from her husband's estate, and had
white-bread made of it secretly, at the pastry-cook's. Had this been
discovered, it would inevitably have prepared the way for all of them to
the scaffold.

Thus, then, young General Buonaparte, or, as he subsequently wrote the
name himself, "Bonaparte," passed quiet days of expectation, hoping
that, should the existing government, so hostile to him, be suppressed
by another, his wishes might be at last fulfilled. These wishes were, by
the way, of a rather unpretending character. "If I could only live here
quietly, at Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent
that pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a
carriage besides, I should be the happiest of men!"

He was quite seriously entertaining the idea of renting the "pretty
little house" in common with his uncle Fesch afterward the cardinal,
when the important events that soon shook Paris once more prevented him,
and the famous 13th Vendemiaire, 1795, again su