received warning of a plot to poison him; he had caused the bearer of the note to be accompanied by a magistrate to the house of the woman who had furnished the information, and she was found lying dead on the floor, her throat cut and her body mutilated. The would-be murderers had, doubtless, discovered her betrayal of them, and had in this manner taken vengeance and assured their own safety. After such an occurrence, Napoleon was not the man to be caught napping; and it was noticed that at the official banquets to which he was invited he either ate nothing, or slightly lunched on wine and bread brought by one of his aides. The Directory gave him, in due time, a grand public reception at the Luxembourg, which was attended by immense numbers, and which was as imposing as the pomp of ceremony and the genuine enthusiasm of the people could make it. But the part played by the Directory and Talleyrand was theatrically overdone, and gave a tone of bombast and insincerity to the whole. What now must Napoleon do? There was peace on the Continent; he was too young for a place in the Directory, and if he remained in Paris too long, France would forget him. This was the reasoning of Napoleon, the most impatient of men. Evidently the reasoning was unsound; it was dictated only by his feverish, constitutional need of action. There was no danger of his sinking out of notice or importance in France. There was the danger of his being identified with a party, but even this peril has been exaggerated. Astute and coldly calculating as he was, the party he would have chosen, had he seen fit to choose one at all, would probably have been the strongest, and political success comes to that in the long run. He had been too impatient in Corsica in his earlier struggles; he had there alienated the wise and lovable Paoli, who wanted to be his friend, but could not sympathize with his too violent, too selfishly ambitious character. He had been too impatient to get on in France, and had been perilously near losing his head as a terrorist in the fall of Robespierre. Too anxious for social recognition and independent military command, he had fallen into the snares of Barras and the shady adventuress of whom the libertine Director was tired, and had rushed into a marriage which proved fatal to him as a man and a monarch. The same feverish haste was again upon him, and was to continue to be upon him all the days of his life, until his final premature rush from Elba was to lead him, through the bloody portals of Waterloo, to his prison on the bleak rock of St. Helena. How could a few months of quiet in Paris have tarnished his fame? Had he not seen the heart of liberalism throughout all Europe warm to Paoli,--the time having come,--although the patriot exile had been sitting quietly at English firesides for twenty-one years?