"Now, then! you see what I said; and you know that Dumas is not a bad husband, he loves his wife and his daughters. Listen: I may return in six months, or we may be over there several years." At that Joséphine's tears flowed faster than ever. "If we stay there some years, the fleet will have to return to fetch some twenty thousand men from the Italian coasts. Return to Paris, tell Madame Dumas, and both of you shall return to us with that convoy. Will that suit you, Dumas?" "Perfectly," replied my father. "When there, my dear Joséphine, Dumas, who has only daughters, and I who have not even those, will each of us do our best to produce a boy: if we have a boy, he and his wife shall be its godparents; if he has a boy, you and I will be its godparents. There now, that is a promise; stop crying, and let us talk business." Then, turning to Dermoncourt, Bonaparte said: "M. Dermoncourt, you have just heard a word drop which indicates the destination of our expedition. Not a creature knows it yet: do not let the word 'Egypt' escape your lips; you will readily understand the importance of such a secret." Dermoncourt signified that he would be as dumb as a disciple of Pythagoras. Joséphine consoled herself: indeed, if we may believe Bourrienne, she managed to console herself too well. On the 15th May my father again visited Bonaparte, and the departure was fixed for the 19th. He found Bonaparte just about to dictate an order to Bourrienne; so he was discreetly about to withdraw, when Bonaparte called after him: "No, stay, you are not in the way;--hear what I am going to do." Then, putting his hand on that giant's shoulder: "What I like about you, Dumas (he said) is, not only your indisputable courage, but your humanity, a rarer quality. I know that Collot d'Herbois wanted to cut your head off because in some little town in the Tarantaise you rescued from the guillotine three or four poor devils who did not wish to let their village bells be melted down. Very well! Would you believe that only six weeks ago they shot an old man of eighty--the butchers--under cover of the law _sur les émigrés._ Now write, Bourrienne." And he dictated. "HEADQUARTERS AT TOULON, "27_th Floréal, Year VI_ (16_th May_ 1798). "BONAPARTE, Member of the National Institute, to the Military Commissioners of the 9th Division established in consequence of the law of 19th Fructidor. "I learn with the deepest concern, citizens, that aged people of seventy and eighty years old, poor women who were _enceinte_ and needed by their children, have been shot as suspected of wanting to emigrate. "Have, then, the soldiers of Liberty become executioners? Has the spirit of compassion, which they take even into the very battlefield, become dead within their hearts? The law of 19th Fructidor was a measure providing for public safety; its object was to get at conspirators, not miserable women, and worn-out old men.