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 his wedded obligations.  He is in love, nay, desperately in love.  The image of Josephine is constantly soaring around him, and he pours forth ebullitions of frantic devotion at the cannon’s mouth, in the Canton, anywhere, and everywhere.  He is as rich in phrase as he is in courage and resource.  He finds time to scrawl a few burning words of passion which indicate that his soul is at once aflame with thoughts of her and the grim military task he has undertaken.

He leads to battle flashing with the spirit of assured victory and inspired by the belief that it has been written that he is the chosen force which is to regenerate misgoverned nationalities.  Order out of chaos; moderation in the hour of victory; no interference with any one’s religious belief; stern discipline—­these were some of the behests of this young Titan, whose startling and victorious campaigns were amazing an astonished world and causing significant apprehension in the minds of the Directory, who decided to check the swift process of ascendancy by giving instructions that he was to give over the command of Lombardy to General Kellerman, and go south to commence raiding other parts of Italy, including Rome and Naples.