t 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 questioningly 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 as