The cannon swept them down at every point. At six o'clock the battle was over, and order was restored in Paris. About eighty only were killed, and three or four hundred wounded, as the guns were loaded with powder after two discharges. Napoleon was, as he deserved to be, the hero of the hour. With the utmost self-possession, with a clear brain and never-failing courage, he had been equal to the emergency. Napoleon was made General of the Interior, with the command of Paris. The days of poverty were over. He found places for several of his family, and was much sought after by those in high position. He was especially good to the poor, and the Duchess d'Abrantès tells how he climbed to attics and went down into cellars to feed the hungry. As he was stepping out of his carriage one day at the home of the Duchess, a woman held her dead child before him. It had died from want. She had come to ask him to save her other children. "If nobody will give me anything," she said, "I must even take them all five and drown myself with them." Napoleon remembered how near he had been to drowning himself only a little time before. He obtained the wages due to her husband, who had been killed while at work on the roof of the Tuileries, and a pension was granted her. Soon after this an attractive boy about fourteen years of age came to Napoleon and asked for the sword of his father, who was a general of the Republic, and had been put to death by the Jacobins, because he was a Girondist, or moderate Republican. "I was so touched by this affectionate request," said Napoleon, "that I ordered it to be given to him. This boy was Eugène Beauharnais. On seeing the sword he burst into tears. I felt so affected by his conduct, that I noticed and praised him much. A few days afterwards his mother came to return me a visit of thanks. I was struck with her appearance, and still more with her _esprit_." The young general of twenty-six became thoroughly in love with the graceful and lovable widow of thirty-two. Josephine Tascher, the only child of French parents, had been born in the Island of Martinique, Jan. 24, 1763. She was married when sixteen to Viscount de Beauharnais, a major in the army, who introduced her to the court of Marie Antoinette, but who, with all his wealth and position, did not make her life a happy one. After four years of marriage and the birth of two children, Hortense and Eugène, to whom she was most tenderly attached, she and Beauharnais separated, and she returned to Martinique, but at his persistent request she came back to him after three years. On his imprisonment during the Reign of Terror she attempted to save him and was thrown into prison, where she narrowly escaped the guillotine. He was beheaded July 23, 1794.