About this time, in consequence of some popular tumults at Auxonne, Napoleon, with his regiment, was ordered to that place. He, with some subaltern officers, was quartered at the house of a barber. Napoleon, as usual, immediately, when off of duty, cloistered himself in his room with his law books, his scientific treatises, his histories, and his mathematics. His associate officers loitered through the listless days, coquetting with the pretty wife of the barber, smoking cigars in the shop, and listening to the petty gossip of the place. The barber's wife was quite annoyed at receiving no attentions from the handsome, distinguished, but ungallant young lieutenant. She accordingly disliked him exceedingly. A few years after as Napoleon, then commander of the army of Italy, was on his way to Marengo, he passed through Auxonne. He stopped at the door of the barber's shop and asked his former hostess, if she remembered a young officer by the name of Bonaparte, who was once quartered in her family. "Indeed, I do," was the pettish reply, "and a very disagreeable inmate he was. He was always either shut up in his room or, if he walked out, he never condescended to speak to any one." "Ah! my good woman," Napoleon rejoined; "had I passed my time as you wished to have me, I should not now have been in command of the army of Italy." The higher nobility and most of the officers in the army were in favor of Royalty. The common soldiers and the great mass of the people were advocates of Republicanism. Napoleon's fearless avowal, under all circumstances, of his hostility to monarchy and his approval of popular liberty, often exposed him to serious embarrassments. He has himself given a very glowing account of an interview at one of the fashionable residences at Auxonne, where he had been invited to meet an aristocratic circle. The revolution was just breaking out in all its terror, and the excitement was intense throughout France. In the course of conversation Napoleon gave free utterance to his sentiments. They all instantly assailed him, gentlemen and ladies, pell-mell. Napoleon was not a man to retreat. His condensed sentences fell like hot shot among the crowd of antagonists who surrounded him. The battle waxed warmer and warmer. There was no one to utter a word in favor of Napoleon. He was a young man of nineteen, surrounded by veteran generals and distinguished nobles. Like Wellington at Waterloo he was wishing that some "Blucher or night were come." Suddenly the door was opened, and the mayor of the city was announced. Napoleon began to flatter himself that a rescue was at hand, when the little great man in pompous dignity joined the assailants and belabored the young officer at bay, more mercilessly than all the rest. At last the lady of the house took compassion upon her defenseless guest, and interposed to shield him from the blows which he was receiving in the unequal contest.