s well-managed eloquence to the plain military
oratory of the two generals. In the interior of this military temple a
statue of Mars sleeping had been placed, and from the pillars and roof
were suspended the trophies of Denain, Fontenoy, and the campaign of
Italy, which would still have decorated that edifice had not the demon of
conquest possessed Bonaparte. Two Invalides, each said to be a hundred
years old, stood beside the Minister of War; and the bust of the
emancipator of America was placed under the trophy composed of the flags
of Aboukir. In a word, recourse was had to every sort of charlatanism
usual on such occasions. In the evening there was a numerous assembly at
the Luxembourg, and Bonaparte took much credit to himself for the effect
produced on this remarkable day. He had only to wait ten days for his
removal to the Tuileries, and precisely on that day the national mourning
for Washington was to cease, for which a general mourning for freedom
might well have been substituted.

I have said very little about Murat in the course of these Memoirs except
mentioning the brilliant part he performed in several battles. Having
now arrived at the period of his marriage with one of Napoleon's sisters
I take the opportunity of returning to the interesting events which
preceded that alliance.

His fine and well-proportioned form, his great physical strength and
somewhat refined elegance of manner,--the fire of his eye, and his fierce
courage in battle, gave to Murat rather the character of one of those
'preux chevaliers' so well described by Ariosto and Taro, that, that a
Republican soldier. The nobleness of his look soon made the lowness of
his birth be forgotten. He was affable, polished, gallant; and in the
field of battle twenty men headed by Murat were worth a whole regiment.
Once only he showed himself under the influence of fear, and the reader
shall see in what circumstance it was that he ceased to be himself.

--[Marshal Lannes, so brave and brilliant in war and so well able to
appreciate courage, one day sharply rebuked a colonel for having
punished a young officer just arrived from school at Fontainebleau
because he gave evidence of fear in his first engagement. "Know,
colonel," said he, "none but a poltroon (the term was oven more
strong) will boast that he never was afraid."--Bourrienne.]--

When Bonaparte in his first Italian campaign had forced Wurmser to
retreat into Mantua with 28,