Napoleon exerted himself to put a stop to these atrocities, but he was as yet without political influence, and he could do nothing. Some unfortunates he rescued from his own soldiers, and secretly sent away. He was forced to witness the execution of one old man of eighty-four, whose crime was that he was a millionnaire. “When I saw this,” said Napoleon afterward, “it seemed to me that the end of the world had come.” In his spiteful _Memoirs_, Barras labors hard to draw a repulsive portrait of the Napoleon of Toulon. The young officer is represented as bustling about with a bundle of his _Supper of Beaucaire_, handing copies right and left to officers and men. He is made to profess rank Jacobinism, and to allude to Robespierre and Marat as “my saints.” He pays servile court to the wife of Commissioner Ricord, and to the Convention potentates generally. Of course he was on his knees to Barras. That lofty magnate stoops low enough to mention, as a matter detrimental to Napoleon, that his uniform was worn out and dirty--as if a tattered and soiled uniform at the close of such a siege, such herculean work, could have been anything but a badge of honor to the soldier who wore it! Dugommier’s official report on the taking of Toulon contains no mention of Napoleon by name, but he uses this expression, “The fire from our batteries, directed with the greatest talent,” etc. This allusion could have been to no other than to Napoleon. To the minister of war Duteil wrote on December 19, 1793, “I cannot find words to describe the merit of Bonaparte; a considerable amount of science, just as much intelligence, and too much bravery, such is a feeble outline of the virtues of that rare officer.” The Commissioners themselves, whose names crowded the name of Bonaparte out of the official report, recognized his services by at once nominating him to the post of general of brigade. * * * * *