Show AN IMPERIAL BARBARIAN Early in Bonapartes career even before be-fore the period of his successes in Italy before Marengo and precedent to the treaty of Campo Formio when he accosted ac-costed men and women in the salons of the Directory it was in a manner to establish es-tablish tne superiority of the questioner to the person answering Are you married mar-ried ho would say to one To another How many children have you Once he planted himself as stiffly as the stiffest of German generals straight before a lady celebrated for her beauty wit and the incisiveness of her opinions and said to her Madame I do not like to have women meddle with politics All equality all familiarity freedom or companionship fled at his approach When he had been appointed to command the army of Italy Admiral Decres who had known him well at Paris hearing that he was to pass through Toulon offered to present all his comrades The admiral says Iran I-ran full of eagerness and delight to greet him The doors of the z7on opened I was going to spring toward him when his attitude his look the sound of his voice were sufficient to arrest me There was nothing offensive or insulting but it was enough After that Inever tried to overstep the distance that he had placed between us Some days later at Albenga the generals gen-erals of division among the rest Auge reau a kind of heroical rough old soldier sol-dier proud of his tall form and of his bravery came to headquarters very badly disposed toward the little upstart whom they had sent to them from Paris From the < description given of him Auge reau is insulting and insubordinate in advance ad-vance A favorite of Barras I he says a street general lJ They are admitted and Bonaparte makes them wait He appears ap-pears finally girds on his sword puts on his hat explains his dispositions gives them his orders and dismisses them Augereau had remained dumb when they are outside he first recovers himself and finds acain his customary oaths Ho agrees with Massena that If that little b of a general frightened him He is not able to understand the as cendency with which he felt himself crushed at the first glance Another specimen of this ascend ency on another old soldier of the Revolution Revo-lution still rougher and more energetic than Augereau is given in the experience experi-ence of Gen Vandamme In 1815 Van dammo said to Marshal Soult one day as they were ascending together the steps oi the Tuilleries My dear friend that devil of a man referring to the Emperor Em-peror exercises a fascination over me that I am unable to account for It infl ences me to that degree that I who fear neither God nor devil I am ready to tremble trem-ble like a child when he approaches He could make me pass thiough the eye of a needle to cast myself in the fire for him And he himself said on a certain occasion Yes I am a soldier because be-cause it is the especial gift I received atm at-m birth it is my existence my habit of life Wherever I have been I have commanded At twentvthree years of age I commanded at the siege of Toulon I commanded in Paris on the Vondemiairo I aroused the enthusiasm of the soldiers in Italy as soon as I appeared ap-peared before them I was born for that His was an extraordinary and superior nature made for command and conquest Bonaparte had the utmost contempt for abstract sciences and for the men who professed them One day he said to a person standing near him There are over there twelve or fifteen metaphysicians metaphy-sicians who are good for nothing but to be thrown into some fishpond They are vermin that I have upon my clothing Applied science however in its various forms and ramifications Jound in him a worthy and enthusiastic thusiastic disciple Books served him only in suggesting to him questions and to these questions he responds solely through his own experience He had read very little and that cursorily His classical instruction was rudimentary Polite and learned literature the philosophy philoso-phy of the study and of the salon with with which his contemporaries were imbued im-bued glided over his intelligence as water wa-ter over a rock Mathematical calculations calcula-tions alone the positive conceptions of geography and history penetrated his mind and were engraven there In all things he was severely practial and never speculative He was was a first clans mechanician He said There is nothing pertaining to war that I could not make myself If there was no one to make powder I could manufacture manufac-ture it If gun carnages were wanted I could construct them If it were necessary to cast cannon I could do it Therefore his taste for details in regard to which his curiosity and avidity were insatiable He knew more than the chief in each of the governmental departments de-partments and in each office ho knew more than the clerks Where other administrators ad-ministrators saw abstractions articles of the code and precedents he saw the soul and what it is that of the Frenchman the Italian the German the peasant tho workman the bourgeois the noble that of the Jacobin still devoted to the phantom phan-tom of the Mountain of the returned emigre that of the soldier the officer the official everywhere the individual actual and complete the man who labors manufactures fights marries suffers trifles and dies Among his diverse faculties however great they were that of constructive imagination im-agination was the greatest From the very beginning the intense heat and seething of his genius may be felt under the coldness and stiffness of his positive and technical instructions When lam laying out a military plan he once said to Roederer there is no one more timid than I am I exaggerate all the dangers and evils possible in the tin umstances I am in a state of painful agitation That does not hinder me from appearing composed com-posed and serene in tho presence of those who are about me I am like a young girl in her first accouchment Henry Howard in Cosmopolitan for June |