VII.
HE.
There are various and conflicting accounts of the events which led to Napoleon's first acquaintance with Josephine. The story usually told is that a short time after he had put down the attack on the Convention, Napoleon was visited by a young man who begged to be excused from obeying a decree which the victorious General had just published—the decree ordering the disarmament of the civil population. The youth remarks that the sword which he desires to preserve had belonged to his father, and as he mentions the father's name Napoleon realises how different is his position from that of a few months ago, when he was pawning his sword and half starving, or picking up meals by taking "pot-luck" at the houses of old friends, not much richer than himself. For the youth was the son of Viscount Beauharnais, and Viscount Beauharnais was a nobleman of ancient descent; had even been, like Mirabeau and other fathers of the Revolution, once President of the great Constituent Assembly which had made the Revolution; had been Commander-in-Chief of one of the armies of the Republic; and, finally, after the manner of such highly-distinguished aristocrats in those days, had been guillotined. Napoleon is interested and flattered by the request of the lad, grants it quite cordially, and a few
