Bonaparte's condition had been greatly changed since he had parted from Josephine, and she must have been greatly surprised at seeing the position he occupied. Great results had been obtained, and he wore an air of victorious superiority, such as belonged to but few kings or princes. The archduke who had ruled over Lombardy a few weeks earlier had been far from possessing such authority. Bonaparte did not occupy the archduke's palace, lest he should offend the republican susceptibilities of the Directory; but he had a truly princely residence, the palace of a great and noble patriot of Milan, the Duke of Serbelloni.

He had just been negotiating as an equal with the King of Sardinia, the Pope, the Duke of Modena, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Venice and Genoa had just been overcome by force and political maneuvering; Rome and Naples had been detached from the coalition; Upper Italy freed from the Austrian yoke; the most wonderful masterpieces of antiquity had been sent to Paris as part of the booty of the campaign: these were the marvels wrought in a very few days.

From the Alps to the Apennines, from the mountains of Tyrol to Vesuvius, the whole peninsula resounded with the name of Bonaparte. But he had to sustain this brilliant role, and preserve the glory he had so swiftly acquired. Austria was raising armies much superior in numbers to the force they were to meet. The Pope and the Neapolitan court were most ardently devoted to the success of the Austrians.

At the first reverse of the young conqueror, this framework of power which he had built up so gloriously would fall to the ground like a card house. Liberal ideas were then only on the surface in Italy; below them ruled the spirit of reaction. He could not count on Venice, where the old aristocracy was full of uneasiness; nor on the King of Sardinia, who yearned for revenge; nor on the King of Naples, whose wife was the sister of Queen Marie Antoinette; nor on the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was an Austrian Archduke; nor on the Republic of Genoa, with its oligarchy in the pay of England; nor on the Pope, who looked only with horror on an army of Jacobins.

In short, everything had to be done over again; and no sooner had he had the joy of seeing his wife than he was compelled to leave her again for the wars. His love was so impetuous that he even determined to take Josephine with him. This was an unheard-of innovation; but Bonaparte was not accustomed to imitating others: he did only what seemed good to him.

He left Milan to try to capture Mantua before the arrival of the army commanded by Wurmser, and, July 6, 1796, wrote from Roverbella to Josephine, who had stayed in Milan: "I have beaten the enemy; Kilmaine will send you a copy of my report. I am dead tired. I beg of you to go at once to Verona: I need you, for I believe I am going to be ill. I send you a thousand kisses. I am in bed."

July 11, there is another letter, from Verona: "I had hardly left Roverbella when I learned that the enemy was appearing before Verona. Massena made the preparations, which turned out most fortunately. We have taken six hundred prisoners and captured their cannon. General Brune had seven bullets through his clothes, but not a scratch: that's good luck. I send you a thousand kisses. I am very well. We had only ten killed and a hundred wounded."

July 11, Bonaparte wrote from Marmirolo to Josephine a letter worthy of the most ardent lover: "I have received your letter, my dear one, and it fills my heart with joy. I am very grateful to you for your trouble in sending me word about yourself: you ought to be better to-day. I am sure that you must be quite well. I beg of you to ride on horseback; it can't fail to do you good. Since I left you I have been continually sad. My only happiness is to be with you. I am continually recalling your kisses, your tears, your kind jealousy, and the fair Josephine's charms are forever kindling a blazing fire in my heart and my senses. When, free from all uneasiness and all business, shall I be able to pass all my time with you, to have nothing to do but to love you, and to think of nothing but of the happiness of telling and proving it to you? I will send you your horse, but I hope that you will soon be able to join me."

The letter concludes with an outburst of enthusiastic passion: "A few days ago I thought I loved you; but since I have seen you I feel that I love you a thousand times more. Since I have known you, I adore you every day more: this proves that what La Bruyere says about love coming in a flash, is false. Everything in nature has its course and different stages of growth. Ah! I beg of you let me see some of your faults! Be less beautiful, less graceful, less tender, less kind; above all, be never jealous, never weep: your tears rob me of my reason; they fire my blood. Be sure that it is not in my power to have a thought which is not yours or an idea which does not refer to you. Rest well; be strong soon. Come to me and let us at least be able to say before we die, So many days we were happy! Millions of kisses, and even to Fortune, in spite of his crossness."

Note: Fortune was Josephine's lap-dog.

July 18, there was another letter, also written at Marmirolo: "I have spent the whole night under arms. I should have taken Mantua by a bold and lucky blow, had not the water of the lake fallen so rapidly that my column, which had embarked, could not get there. This evening I am going to try again, a different plan... I have a letter from Eugene, which I enclose. I beg of you to write for me to the dear children, and to send them some trinkets. Tell them that I love them as if they were my own children. Yours and mine are so mingled in my heart that there is no difference. I am very anxious to know how you are and what you are doing. I have been to Virgil's village, on the banks of the lake, in the silvery light of the moon, and there was not a moment when I did not think of Josephine."

Michelet, in his volume entitled Until the 18th Brumaire, comments as follows on this sentence: "In the course of the siege of Mantua, Bonaparte said to Josephine in a sentimental letter, which bears all the marks of the taste of the time, that while thinking of her, in melancholy revery, he had visited Virgil's village on the lake in the moonlight. It was doubtless then that he conceived the notion of the festival in honor of the great poet, which he ordered later, and which was of great service to him with society, nurtured in worship of the classics. In engravings we often see the hero of Italy near Virgil's tomb and under the shadow of his laurel."

Whatever may be said, there was a tender and sentimental chord in Napoleon's character. "Nature had given him," says the Duke of Ragusa in his Memoirs, "a grateful and kindly, I might almost say sensitive, heart. This assertion will contradict many fixed but inaccurate opinions. His sensitiveness evaporated in time, but in the course of my writing I shall narrate incidents and give undeniable proofs of the accuracy of my opinion."

Napoleon was fond of poetry. It was he who said at Saint Helena, "Imagination rules the world." In literature, nothing ever seemed to him high enough, ideal enough. His whole childhood was passed in ardent meditation upon the poets and great men. He was equally interested in Homer and Alexander, in Virgil and Caesar. As a student of Plutarch and Jean Jacques Rousseau, he belonged to the idealist school, and he admired everything great, everything beautiful. He loved love as he loved glory; that is to say, without bounds. The style of his proclamations and bulletins harmonizes with that of his love-letters. As hero or as lover, he is always the same man.

Bonaparte wrote again from Marmirolo, July 19: "I have not heard from you for two days; I have said this same thing thirty times to-day; you will see that this is very gloomy; nevertheless, you cannot doubt of the tender and single interest you inspire me with. Yesterday we attacked Mantua. We set it on fire with two batteries firing red-hot balls and shells. The unhappy city burned all night. It was a horrible and impressive sight. We have got possession of many of the outlying works, and open our trenches to-night. I am to transfer headquarters to Castiglione to-morrow, and I mean to sleep there. I have received a courier from Paris.

There were two letters for you; I have read them. Nevertheless, although this act seems to me perfectly simple, and you gave me free leave the other day, I fear that you may be annoyed, and this thought distresses me much. I should have liked to seal them again. Fie! that would have been disgraceful. If I am to blame, I beg your pardon; I give you my word that I was not moved by jealousy: no, certainly, I respect my dear one too much for that. I wish you would give me absolute permission to read your letters; then I should suffer from neither remorse nor fear. Achille has come with despatches from Milan; no letters from my dear one! Farewell, my only love! When can we meet? I shall come to Milan myself to get you. A thousand kisses, as warm as my heart, as pure as you are. I have had the courier summoned: he tells me that he called on you, and that you said you had nothing for him. Shame! wicked, ugly, cruel tyrant; pretty little monster! You laugh at my threats, at my foolishness; ah, if I only could put you in my heart, you know I should lock you up there! Tell me that you are happy, well, and very loving."

From Castiglione, Bonaparte wrote to Josephine, July 21: "I hope that I shall find a letter from you when I arrive this evening. You know, dear Josephine, what pleasure your letters give me; and I am sure you like to write them. I leave, this evening, for Peschiera and Verona; then I shall go to Mantua, and possibly to Milan, to get a kiss, since you assure me they are not of ice. I hope to find you perfectly recovered, and that you will be able to go to headquarters with me, and not to leave me again. Are you not the soul of my life and the passion of my heart? Good by, lovely and kind creature, without a rival, you dear goddess; a thousand loving kisses!"

But Wurmser was advancing. Bonaparte could not go to Milan for Josephine; but he persuaded her to join him, by means of this letter from Castiglione, July 22: "The army requires my presence here; it is quite impossible for me to go so far away as Milan. That would take five or six days; and in that time something might happen which would make my presence indispensable. You tell me you are perfectly well; then, I beg of you to come to Brescia. I am sending Murat to prepare a lodging for you there, such as you want. I think you would do well to rest on the 6th [Thermidor], and to leave Milan very late, reaching Brescia on the 7th, where the most devoted of lovers will be awaiting you. I am sorry that you can imagine, my dear one, that my heart has room for any one besides you: it belongs to you by right of conquest, and this conquest will be solid and eternal. I don't know why you mention Madame T., in whom I take very little interest, as in the women of Brescia.

As to those letters which you are sorry I opened, this one shall be the last; your letter had not reached me. Good by, my dear; let me hear from you often. Come speedily to me; be happy and perfectly easy: all is going on well, and my heart is yours for life. Don't fail to return to Adjutant-General Miollis the box of medals that he wrote to me he had given to you.

Mankind is so malicious and gossiping that one cannot be too careful. Be well, love me, and come soon to Brescia. At Milan, I have a carriage for both town and country use: you will use that for your journey. Bring what silverware you need, and whatever may be necessary. Travel slowly, and in the cool of the day, to avoid getting tired. It takes the soldiers only three days to go to Brescia. You can post for fourteen hours of the way. I advise you to sleep, the 6th, at Cassano: I will go as far as I can to meet you, on the 7th. Good by, dear Josephine! a thousand loving kisses."

By thus calling his wife to him, in time of war, between two battles, Bonaparte seemed to be doing something very rash; yet -- for at that time he was always successful -- he perhaps owed his safety to this apparently unjustifiable resolution. Josephine seemed his good angel. We may say that throughout his career, so long as he was with her, he always enjoyed the most brilliant success. A gambler -- and politics is a game, like almost all other human things -- would say that she brought him good luck.

Josephine did not fail to meet him at Brescia, as he had appointed; but scarcely had they got there when, July 28, they had to leave. Wurmser had received word of the critical condition of Mantua, and had hastened his march some eight or ten days, which compelled the French army to hasten in its turn.

General de Segur says in his memoirs: "To picture the disorder, the urgent peril into which Wurmser's double attack at first threw Bonaparte, let us listen to Josephine herself, who used to take pleasure in telling us how, when the movement began, she was quietly in Brescia, and the proveditore was trying to tempt her to stay one night longer, by proposing a grand entertainment. It was she, she told me, who refused so obstinately that she persuaded Bonaparte to leave at once. This happy inspiration saved them. They were not four leagues from Brescia when the Austrians, in league with the proveditore, entered in large force. Bonaparte would have been captured at the ball, and either put to death or made prisoner of war."

The next day Josephine was of no less service to her husband. At dawn the two reached a castle close to Verona, escorted by twenty men at the most; there they were assailed by other forces of the enemy who had come down the Adige. Josephine's eyes, which were better than her husband's, had given her notice of this new danger, and he fancied that he saved her from it by sending her to the shores of Lake Garda. But there, on the other hand, she was greeted by new bullets from a hostile flotilla which controlled the lake.

Abandoning her carriage, she mounted a horse and fled to Peschiera, where Bonaparte, who had received word, sent for her. She rejoined him at Castiglione. At every step she came across soldiers wounded in the skirmishes preceding the great battles.

Bonaparte, seeing her in such peril, decided to make her return to Brescia; but Josephine was stopped by a division of the enemy which had already reached Ponte Marco on its way towards Lonato. She was obliged to retrace her steps and to return to Castiglione, where Bonaparte still was.

"At that time," says the Memorial of Saint Helena, "in the anxiety and excitement of the moment, she was frightened and wept much."

When Bonaparte heard that the Austrians had entered Brescia and that his communications with Milan were cut off, he sent his wife to Central Italy, making her pass before Mantua, which was still besieged by the French. Moved by the sorrow she showed in parting from him, he said, "Wurmser will have to pay dear for the tears he has caused you."

Since his marriage, Bonaparte had passed but very few days with Josephine, and his love for her produced a certain excitement which made him ready to do great things. His wife's tears moved him deeply.

"I shall console her," he said to himself, "she shall have every joy and glory. To that face now wet with tears I shall bring the glow of happiness."

The climate of Italy, the bright sun, the clear sky, the summer heat, the excitement of war, the smell of powder, the fierceness of the conflict, the ardor of youth, all combined to fire the vivid imagination of the hero. He has reached one of those periods in the careers of great men, when they feel themselves lifted above the earth by a supernatural breath, and they are moved by a mysterious force, as if they were divinely inspired. Men of action and artists know those privileged moments when they become capable of wonders.

With the character that he possessed, Bonaparte could not appear before Josephine as a beaten man. He wanted to dazzle, to fascinate her, to wring from her cries of admiration, to cover her with glory. If he had been beaten, he would have scorned all pity and consolation. His patriotism and his love fired him with the determination to triumph. His nature, already compact of energy, renewed its strength and audacity, and he was irresistible. It was when he saw Josephine in tears that love, ambition, pride, and hunger for victory took possession of his soul and gave to his genius a fire, an impulse, a development, such as it is hard to conceive. He said: "I shall see her again, and it will be when I shall have triumphed."

Hence he had to conquer at any price. He wished victory for the sake of France and for the sake of Josephine. That day he had no mistrust of fortune; he believed in his lucky star more firmly than ever.

A secret voice said to him, "Forward!" Josephine herself must have been reassured by her husband's eagle glance. The six days' campaign was about to open. A woman's love was the talisman with which Bonaparte was about to work miracles.

Nevertheless, Josephine was in flight, passing in her carriage very near to besieged Mantua. She was fired on from the town, and some of her escort were hit. General de Segur narrates what she herself told him that, as they were passing by within gunshot, the firing was so hot that she was obliged to take refuge in a chapel. A soldier ran up to urge them to leave, showing them some Austrian cannon aimed at that dangerous place. In fact, she had scarcely got away before the cannon-balls destroyed the building. She crossed the Po, and reached Lucca, going through Bologna and Ferrara, "pursued," says the Memorial of Saint Helena, "by fear and all the evil rumors which generally accompanied our armies, yet supported by her confidence in her husband's star.

Already such was the state of public opinion in Italy and such the feeling inspired by the French general, that, in spite of the dangers of the moment and all the false rumors that were current, his wife was received at Lucca by the Senate and treated like a great princess: it went to congratulate her and presented her with gifts of precious oils. It was justified in these rejoicings, for a few days later messages announced her husband's wonderful successes and the total defeat of Wurmser."

Just when she had crossed the Po, and put that river between herself and Wurmser's uhlans, Josephine received a letter from Bonaparte, dated August 4, in which, discounting the future, he announced to her, as already won, the victory of the next day.