old

But the morning was full of interruptions. And here was Carteaux, the commander-in-chief. Painter before the Revolution, Napoleon called him "the Dauber," though not yet quite to his face. Leagues of gold lace on his chest, he lumbered up.

"Citizen major," he thundered, or tried to thunder, "post one of the batteries on yonder hill."

"For what reason, general? As a decoration?"

"You are insubordinate!" spluttered old Carteaux. "That hill commands all the enemy forts."

"And they in turn command our battery. It would be silenced in five minutes."

The gold mountain moved on. His junior was insubordinate, but, by the devil, he was useful! The battery was not placed on that hill. Napoleon took up his glasses again and looked at the ships. Below the bulwarks of each were broad black bands with many apertures. From one of these apertures something spoke. A little white puff of smoke coiled and floated lightly away. A shell whistled through the air, landed at their feet, hurling a shower of sand on a young officer writing by the redoubt.

"Good!" said the young officer, as he blew away the particles of sand from the sheet of paper. "Now I shall have no need of sand!"

Dropping his glasses, Napoleon studied him-son of a plodding farmer, but full of fire, also of oaths, and very fond of pretty ankles and duels. The last qualities did not matter. But he was looking for young men with fire-was gathering them here and there.

"Lieutenant Junot," he said, “run after 'the Dauber'-if you can catch up with him," he interpolated ironically as the barrage grew hot-"and tell him I want you for my aide."

The fiery young farmer swore a joyous oath and embraced him on the spot. There had been other young men who had embraced him on the spot-Desaix, Muiron, Marmont, Victor-if he was in search of young men, these, scarcely younger than he, were also looking for a leader. They were strangely were strangely unobservant too, lamentably oblivious of externals. They did not appear to notice that this new chief of theirs was much smaller than they, and thin and frail; that his uniform was disordered, crumpled, and muddied from sleeping in the rain; that his locks were tangled; that spots of fever, also blotches caught when he had seized a ramrod from an infected gunner, disfigured his yellow face. They had caught something else—an intangible something-the note that vibrated in his word of command-so rapid yet so cool and collected, and more compelling than any orator of the tribune. Also they had glimpsed a pair of blue-black eyes that burned out of those splotched featuresbeautiful eyes and stern and piercing, holding all the joy of battle, yet ever far-seeing, calm and controlled. There are things, unseen, unheard, that more than trumpets stir the blood.

What was it he had said to each? "Follow me, and we shall find paths of glory!"

Ever to statesman or assassin, subaltern or general, the ringing, the challenging, the right word!

So laughing and slapping each

explanation of the disposition of his batteries, also of his grievances. No qualms had he about criticism of his superiors. The besieging army was being crippled by incompetents. Fuddlers would not let him carry out his plans. They should put in some one who would act, not strut about in gold lace-though these he did not indicate by name.

Concentration was then his theme -a favorite with him. In a siege one must envelop, to be sure; but one must not scatter one's forces too far along the line. Attack at one point! Below them lay a fort held by the Spanish and English, a few hundred feet from the battery and not far from the besieging ships.

"Strike there, citizen commissioners," he said, "if you would take Toulon. That fort captured, the fleet retires, and Toulon falls!" Then he added as the two shrank under the desultory fire: "It is to cover an attack on that fort that I have placed this battery so near. I had difficulty in manning it until I dubbed it the Battery of the Men Without Fear. At once I had recruits enough."

So the two men of blood, the one with the haughty seigniorial air, the other with his snowy jabot, departed, a little more erectly than they had come, with that sarcastic comment ringing in their ears.

"He will do," said Barras, "but he will be hard to manage."

Though he did not hear this remark, Napoleon knew that he had impressed them.

"The fox and leopard!" he said to Junot, tweaking his ear in a rare good humor. "And do you know what they are saying? That they will use

me. I will let them think so. It is the best strategy, though too subtle for you, my fire-eater." Then he frowned. "But Stanislas Fréron for a brother-in-law. . . . Bah! No."

In a week he had encouraging evidence of the impression he and his representations had made. The dauber Carteaux left, and another commander, Doppet, took his place. "Not so much gold lace," said Napoleon, "but quite as much the bungler"; then, when this Doppet for his opening gesture ordered an attack on the fort Napoleon had indicated to the two commissioners, "He has received his cue!"

The day set came, and through the morning Napoleon's barrages fell into the fort; with noon the advance sounded and the smoking guns stood still. At once the troops which had formed to the rear of the batteries charged down the hill, up another, and hacked their way through the palisades, gaining in quick order the enemy's second line of trenches. On the third the redcoats fell back, suddenly reformed, and, with bayonets, drove back the blues.

Still by the twenty-four-pounders of the perilous battery, Napoleon observed the turn of the tide and sprang on a gun-carriage.

"Citizen gunners," he cried, "Men Without Fear, let us not leave to the infantry the glory we have won with our guns. We ourselves shall take that fort!"

And leaping down, he led the way over the open ground, under a heavy fire, and gained the breach. The bluecoats, thus reinforced, now drove the reds back; but on the hills the drums suddenly beat the retreat, and back the blues tumbled.

Now Napoleon did not mind so much the bullet that had clipped him in the forehead, but he was infuriated by that order. Blinded both by rage Blinded both by rage and the blood from his wound, he sought out Doppet.

"Our blow has failed"-he hurled the insult straight in his commander's teeth, there where he stood surrounded by his staff-"because a bâtard has beaten the retreat!"

Again the right word; this was a camp language the gunners could understand. They cheered. The irresolute Doppet, too, understood, but said nothing.

With December came another general, after other conferences with Barras and Fréron-this time a bluff old fellow named Dugommier, and a soldier more nearly after Napoleon's own heart-not quite, though, since no one could come up to "Plutarch's men," and while Napoleon paid tribute to many a comrade's courage, he had scant respect for any strategy but his own.

Still, Dugommier was sagacious enough to order another attack on that fort; resolute enough to keep the drums from beating any premature retreats. Toulon must be taken before the new year.

them, with those of the fort, on the ships at anchor.

Below, in the murk, though they could see neither sail nor mast, even by the light of the bombardment, he knew the ships were weighing anchor. Then suddenly he saw clearly enough, as magazine and powder-ship went up, lighting the town, the surrounding hills and the harbor. Silhouettes struggled feverishly at the capstans and halyards, trying to heave up the anchors, to raise fluttering bits of topsail; and the quais were crowded with kneeling figures imploring the English sailors to take them away from la guillotine's vengeance. Their prayers unheard, they flung themselves into a sea as violently agitated from the explosions as any shaken by an earthquake.

For hours they saw these tiny silhouettes in the intermittent flashes; then dawn came, revealing the ships in a long-drawn-out queue far out at sea. By noon they had entered Toulon.

For a Christmas present, though in the Revolution they did not think so much of sacred festivals, they made Napoleon a brigadier.

"We'll have to promote him,” said old Dugommier. "If we don't, he'll promote himself!"

Which does not matter so long as he got that promotion. The steps had been slow and hard. They were coming faster now. In 1786 a souslieutenant; in '91 a first; '92 a captain; major that fall; and now, with this new year of '94 breaking, a general. Not so bad-a general at twentyfour! Things at last were looking up!

And so, with his comrades, Muiron, Junot, Desaix, Victor, and Marmont, he left for a new front, to take charge

of the artillery of the Army of Italy. And still the letters that found their way to the Rue Pavillon contained a goodly percentage of his increased salary. Pauline got her new shoes, Elisa that hat; and the whole family moved to better lodgings in the Hôtel Cipières. But Letizia did not spend it all. Though not exactly a prayerful woman, she gave thanks to God for their good fortune and put away most of the extra francs in an old stocking.

22

The eagle was off on his flight, but still they tried to leash him. In Italy they planned to send him to the guillotine.

Now this was a strange reward for a man who had ranged up and down the coast building forts, reorganized the artillery, marched expeditions up the mountain passes, executed difficult diplomatic missions to Genoa, and despatched fleets against Corsica, even if these had been dashed in pieces by the English, for he was never lucky at sea. But possibly he had given too much advice. CerCertainly he had stressed his old idea of concentration, of massing troops and guns at a vital point. The two French armies operating on this front were jealous of each other; yet he had urged their union. He had even embodied his views in letters which he gave to Augustin Robespierre, younger brother of the famous Maximilien, to carry to Paris.

"Once a breach has been made," he wrote, "the enemy's power of resistance is broken. Strike at Germany first; and Italy, then Spain, will fall. The two armies must be joined, with a common center and animated by the same spirit."

Sound, yes, but the commissioners saw in it only disloyalty. He was, said they, trying to break the Army of the Alps. So they lodged him in jail at the foot of the mountains.

But a few feet of stone cell were too narrow for his bold spirit; and when on the fourteenth day they sent for him, he had his defense ready.

"You have relieved me from duty," he said, addressing the commissioners and a few fat generals, "and ordered me under arrest without a hearing. Have I not, since the Revolution began, constantly shown. myself loyal to its principles? Have I not taken my part in the struggle both against internal foes and, as a soldier, against the foreigner? I have sacrificed my home, everything, for the Republic. I served at the siege of Toulon with some distinction and with the army earned laurels at Saorgio.

"Sallicetti"-here he fixed his eyes on his chief betrayer-"you have known me for six years. What have you seen in me that is disloyal to the Revolution?"

In this defense was much of sincerity, for Duty and Self-Interest do not necessarily lie up different roads, despite brother Lucien. But this consciousness of right was not the only quality that impressed them. As one of the old generals-taller by two palms, a prodigious swearer and a very mighty man-remarked: "I cannot understand it. He frightened me. His glance crushed me!" So they opened the prison doors and let him go.

In all these differences with the plumed incompetents of the French armies he had but one friend; that is,