lady he had ever met in the course of his squalid and poverty-stricken youth. It is not in the least likely that Napoleon would have consented to buy even a prize so lofty as the command in Italy at the price of that woman's honour.
And, indeed, Barras is contradictory of his own story. In one page Napoleon figures as a dupe, in the next as a conscious intriguer; now he is madly jealous; the next moment he is more indifferent to the acts of his future wife than the beast in the field.
I agree with the summary of this part of the case which I find in the preface by M. Duruy, the unwilling editor of these Memoirs. It appears to me as true, kind, and judicious.
"True, Bonaparte may have later entertained doubts, suspicions as to Josephine's virtue. And, indeed, it must be confessed that the indiscretions of this most charming, but also most frivolous, of women, furnished matter enough for grievous discoveries. Look at her portrait by Isabey, which dates precisely from that period. This bird-like head, all dishevelled, expresses coquetry, thoughtlessness, an undefinable frailty and inconsistency, characteristic, perhaps, even then, as it had been in the past, of her virtue. It is none the less a certainty that Bonaparte believed in her, and loved her ardently and blindly; that passion alone made him wish for and resolve upon this marriage; and that, if any one calculated in
