is representative of the Republic one and indivisible, embodying
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, at the end of the eighteenth
century, will forever disgrace the judgment and moral condition of the
France which knew Charlemagne.

"Citizen" Barras repudiates the story of Eugene asking the
Commander-in-Chief for his beheaded father's sword. He claims that
Napoleon himself invented the story. But it is highly improbable that
Napoleon would risk at the beginning of his career having his veracity
doubted. In itself, the incident is a small matter. The only real
interest attached to it is the touching pathos of the small boy asking
for and receiving the sword, which, of course, gave his mother the
opportunity of calling to thank the General for his goodness, and in
this way it has historic importance, as Napoleon and Josephine were
married four months after, _i.e._, March 9, 1796, her age being
thirty-two and his twenty-five.

The quibble is that of a small man searching in every pond for mud to
throw at his master's memory. Napoleon gave the facts to Barry
O'Meara at St. Helena, and they also appear in the "Memorial de St.
Helena." Had the introduction of these two remarkable people not come
about in this way, it would have been brought about in some other.
But, whether the story has any interest further than the writer has
stated or not, it is safer to believe Napoleon than Barras, who
boasted after the success of Napoleon in Italy that it was he who had
perceived in him a genius and urged the Directory to appoint him
Commander-in-Chief. Carnot is indignant at this impudent falsehood,
and declares that it was he and not Barras who nominated and urged the
appointment of Bonaparte. Certainly Carnot's story is the accepted
one. It matters little who the selected spokesman of the inspiration
was. France needed a man, and he was found.

On the eve of this obscure and neglected young soldier's departure to
spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the voluptuous Barras was
commissioned by him to announce to the Directory his marriage with
Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then began a period of devouring love
and war such as the world has never beheld. In the midst of strife and
strenuous responsibility, this young missionary, representing the
solacing new doctrine of symbolic brotherhood, neither shirks nor
forgets the responsibilities of his instructions to lay Italy at his
feet.

Nor does he for a moment forget h