“My brother is here.  He has heard of my marriage with pleasure.  He longs to become acquainted with you.  I am endeavoring to persuade him to go to Paris, His wife has recently given birth to a daughter.  They send you a box of bonbons from Genoa as a present.  You will receive oranges, perfumes, and water of orange-flowers, which I send you.  Junot and Murat send their best wishes.

“N.  B.”

The victory which Bonaparte implored from his destiny was soon to take place; and the battle of Mondovi, which followed the capitulation of Cherasco, made Bonaparte master of Piedmont and of the passes of the Alps.  He sent his brother Joseph to Paris, to lay before the Directory pressing considerations concerning the necessity and importance of concluding a permanent peace with the King of Sardinia, so as to isolate Austria entirely in Italy.  At the same time Junot was to take to the Directory the conquered standards.  Joseph and Junot travelled together from Nice by means of post-horses, and they made so rapid a journey that in one hundred and twenty hours they reached Paris.

The victor’s messengers and the conquered flags were received in Paris with shouts of rapture, and with a glowing enthusiasm for General Bonaparte.  His name was on every tongue.  In the streets and on the squares crowds gathered together to talk of the glorious news, and to shout their acclamations to the brave army and its general.  Even the Directory, the five monarchs of France, shared the universal joy and enthusiasm.  They received Joseph and Junot with affable complacency, and communicated to the army and to its general public eulogies.  In honor of the messengers who had brought the standards and the propositions of peace, they gave a brilliant banquet; and Carnot, proud of having been the one who had brought about Bonaparte’s appointment, went so far in his enthusiasm as at the close of the banquet to tear his garments open and exhibit to the assembled guests Napoleon’s portrait which he carried on his breast.

“Tell your brother,” cried he to Joseph, “that I carry him here on my heart, for I foresee he will be the deliverer of France, and therefore he must know that in the Directory he has only admirers and friends.” [Footnote:  “Memoires du Roi Joseph,” vol. i., p. 62.]

But something else, more glorious than these salutations of love from France and from the Directory, was to be brought back by his messengers to the victorious commander-his wife, his Josephine; he claimed her as the reward of battles won.  Joseph was not only the messenger of the general, he was also the messenger of the lover; and before delivering his papers to the Directory, he had first, as Bonaparte had ordered him, to deliver to Josephine his letter which called her to Milan.  Napoleon had thus written to her: 

III.

“To my sweet friend!