Moniteur made up its mind to record the most colossal and decisive fact of modern times, not only for France, but for Europe and the whole human race."
VIII.
TWO NOTORIOUS WOMEN.
Not a member of the whole family of Napoleon is spared by Barras. There is a picture of the mother and sisters of Napoleon which seeks to confirm some of the worst charges made against the Imperial family. It is a squalid and an odious picture, but I am not prepared to say of it, as of other pictures in the book, that it is untrue. A lack of morality of any kind was undoubtedly one of the marked characteristics of the Napoleonic race.
However, it is on poor Josephine that Barras is most severe. The pages which he devotes to her are among the most infamous in literature. But it is my business to let Barras speak for himself.
The two women who were credited with exercising the greatest influence over him at the moment when he was practically Dictator of France, were Madame Tallien and Madame Josephine de Beauharnais. This is how he speaks of them:
"Madame Tallien, since the ninth Thermidor, had shown herself in all public places, even at the theatres, winning undisputed supremacy over her
