For the first time General Bonaparte stood in the presence of the woman who one day was to share his fame and greatness, and this first moment was decisive as to his and her future.  Josephine’s grace and elegance, her sweetness of disposition, her genial cheerfulness, the expression of lofty womanhood which permeated her whole being, and which protected her securely from any rough intrusion or familiarity; her fine, truly aristocratic bearing, which revealed at once a lady of the court and of the great world; her whole graceful and beautiful appearance captivated the heart of Napoleon at the first interview, and the very next day after receiving her short call he hastened to return it.

Josephine was not alone when General Bonaparte was announced; and when the servant named him she could not suppress an inward fear, without knowing why she was afraid.  Her friends, who noticed her tremor and blush, laughed jestingly at the timidity which made her tremble at the name of the conqueror of Paris, and this was, perhaps, the reason why Josephine received General Bonaparte with less complacency than she generally showed to her visitors.

Amid the general silence of all those present the young general (twenty-six years old) entered the drawing-room of the Viscountess de Beauharnais; and this silence, however flattering it might be to his pride, caused him a slight embarrassment.  He therefore approached the beautiful widow with a certain abrupt and perplexed manner, and spoke to her in that hasty, imperious tone which might become a general, but which did not seem appropriate in a lady’s saloon.  General Pichegru, who stood near Josephine, smiled, and even her amiable countenance was overspread with a slight expression of scorn, as she fixed her beautiful eyes on this pale, thin little man, whose long, smooth hair fell in tangled disorder on either side of his temples over his sallow, hollow cheeks; whose whole sickly and gloomy appearance bore so little resemblance to the majestic figure of the lion to which he had been so often compared after his success of the thirteenth Vendemiaire.

“I perceive, general,” suddenly exclaimed Josephine, “that you are sorry it was your duty to fill Paris once more with blood and horror.  You would undoubtedly have preferred not to be obliged to carry out the bloody orders of the affrighted Convention?”

Bonaparte shrugged his shoulders somewhat.  “That is very possible,” said he, perfectly quiet.  “But what can you expect, madame?  We military men are but the automatons which the government sets in motion according to its good pleasure; we know only how to obey; the sections, however, cannot but congratulate themselves that I have spared them so much.  Nearly all my cannon were loaded only with powder.  I wanted to give a little lesson to the Parisians.  The whole affair was nothing but the impress of my seal on France.  Such skirmishes are only the vespers of my fame.” [Footnote:  Napoleon’s words.—­See Le Normand, vol. i., p. 214.]