livid complexion, bowed shoulders and sickly appearance. Bonaparte was a name so strange and so unknown that the War Minister could not remember it; but when the young man spoke, he recognised the acquaintance of Boissy d'Anglas. Bonaparte was told to draw up a memorandum setting forth the views he had expressed verbally; but he went out, and thinking this a polite dismissal, sent no memorandum. But he was induced to present his ideas, and got work in the War Office as a sort of secretary to the Minister. But even this position he did not long retain. He asked for the command of a brigade, a demand which at five-and-twenty struck the superior powers as audacious; and when Pontecoulant retired from office, Napoleon was again without employment.
And finally he had to seek promotion through the lady who, in even virtuous Republican days, played the part of the Pompadour or the Du Barry with the monarchs—Madame Tallien, the mistress of Barras. The reader has heard so much of this episode already that I need not recapitulate it.
There I leave M. Lévy for the moment, and pass to another eulogist of Napoleon, who is even more lifelike in his description of this period in his hero's life.
The work of M. Frédéric Masson deals entirely with one side of Napoleon's life and character—his relations, namely, to women. The book has
