At the time when Bonaparte began to frequent the houses of Barras and Josephine he was, beside most of the men and women he met there—certainly beside Barras and Josephine—a paragon of virtue. They were disciples of pleasure; he of the strenuous life. Up to this time the pleasures of the world had never invited him. He had looked on them as a young philosopher might, bent on seeing and understanding all, but he had never sought them, never been allured by them. To make a place and name for himself was all that Napoleon Bonaparte, up to this time, had desired. Not only did he here, for the first time, come into a circle which cultivated pleasure as an end; but here, for the first time, he saw the refinements, the luxury, the delights of highly developed society. Beautiful, graceful, and witty women he had never known before; he had never set foot before in rooms such as these in which he found Josephine, Mme. Tallien, and Barras. Dinners like these they offered him were an amazement. Not only was he astonished by his surroundings, he was intoxicated by the attention he received. That Josephine, who seemed to him the perfect type of the _grande dame_, should invite him to her home, write him flattering little notes when his visits were delayed, admire his courage, listen to his impetuous talk, prophesy a great future for him, excited his imagination and hope as nothing ever had before. A month had not passed before he was paying her an impassioned court. That she was six years his senior and a widow with two children; that she had no certain income and was of another rank; that he had nothing but his “cloak and sword” and was hardly started in his career, though with a mother and several brothers and sisters looking to him to see them through life—these and all other practical considerations seem to have been thrust aside. He loved Josephine and meant to marry her. All through the fall and winter of 1795 and 1796 he was at her side pressing his suit. But Josephine, though pleased by Napoleon’s devotion, and certainly encouraging him, hesitated. Certainly marriage with the young Corsican was a venture at which a more courageous woman than she might have hesitated, and she, poor woman, had had enough of ventures. Every one so far had ended in disaster—her marriage had ended in separation, her reconciliation with her husband in his death, her property had been lost in a revolution. All she asked of life was an opportunity to settle Eugène and Hortense, and freedom and money enough to be gay. Could she expect this from a marriage with Bonaparte? She herself analyzed her feelings admirably in a letter to a friend: