In the Army of Italy they were asking the same questions, and the Directory could only answer as Junot had done: “As far as I can judge, he is one of those men of whom nature is avaricious, and that she permits upon the earth only from age to age.” He was to replace a commander-in-chief who had sneered at his plans for an Italian campaign and who might be expected to put obstacles in his way. He was to take an army which was in the last stages of poverty and discouragement. Their garments were in rags. Even the officers were so nearly shoeless that when they reached Milan and one of them was invited to dine at the palace of a marquise, he was obliged to go in shoes without soles and tied on by cords carefully blacked. They had provisions for only a month, and half rations at that. The Piedmontese called them the “rag heroes.” Worse than their poverty was their inactivity. “For three years they had fired off their guns in Italy only because war was going on, and not for any especial object—only to satisfy their consciences.” Discontent was such that counter-revolution gained ground daily. One company had even taken the name of “Dauphin,” and royalist songs were heard in camp. Napoleon saw at a glance all these difficulties, and set himself to conquer them. With his generals he was reserved and severe. “It was necessary,” he explained afterward, “in order to command men so much older than myself.” His look and bearing quelled insubordination, restrained familiarity, even inspired fear. “From his arrival,” says Marmont, “his attitude was that of a man born for power. It was plain to the least clairvoyant eyes that he knew how to compel obedience, and scarcely was he in authority before the line of a celebrated poet might have been applied to him: “‘Des egaux? dès longtemps Mahomet n’en a plus.’” General Decrès, who had known Napoleon well at Paris, hearing that he was going to pass through Toulon, where he was stationed, offered to present his comrades. “I run,” he says, “full of eagerness and joy; the _salon_ opens; I am about to spring forward, when the attitude, the look, the sound of his voice are sufficient to stop me. There was nothing rude about him, but it was enough. From that time I was never tempted to pass the line which had been drawn for me.” Lavalette says of his first interview with him: “He looked weak, but his regard was so firm and so fixed that I felt myself turning pale when he spoke to me.” Augereau goes to see him at Albenga, full of contempt for this favorite of Barras who has never known an action, determined on insubordination. Bonaparte comes out, little, thin, round-shouldered, and gives Augereau, a giant among the generals, his orders. The big man backs out in a kind of terror. “He frightened me,” he tells Masséna. “His first glance crushed me.”