Statements made under such circumstances are not proof; but there is this much probability of truth in them, that if we imagine the old Buonaparte in disgrace as of old, following as of old the promptings of his curiosity, indifferent as of old to the success of either principle, and by instinct a soldier as of old,--if we recall him in this character, and remember that he is no longer a youthful Corsican patriot, but a mature cosmopolitan consumed with personal ambition,--we may surely conclude that he was perfectly impartial as to the parties involved, leaned toward the support of the principles of the Revolution as he understood them, and saw in the complications of the hour a probable opening for his ambition. At any rate, his conduct after October fourth seems to uphold this view. He was a changed man, ardent, hopeful, and irrepressible, as he had ever been when lucky; but now, besides, daring, overbearing, and self-confident to a degree which those characteristic qualities had never reached before. His first care was to place on a footing of efficiency the Army of the Interior, scattered in many departments, undisciplined and disorganized; the next, to cow into submission all the low elements in Paris, still hungry and fierce, by reorganizing the National Guard, and forming a picked troop for the special protection of the legislature; the next, to show himself as the powerful friend of every one in disgrace, as a man of the world without rancor or exaggerated partizanship. At the same time he plunged into speculation, and sent sums incredibly large to various members of his family, a single remittance of four hundred thousand francs being mentioned in his letters. Lucien was restored to the arms of his low-born but faithful and beloved wife, and sent to join his mother and sisters in Marseilles; Louis was brought from Châlons, and made a lieutenant; Jerome was put at school in Paris; and to Joseph a consular post was assured. Putting aside all bashfulness, General Buonaparte became a full-fledged society man and a beau. No social rank was now strange to him; the remnants of the old aristocracy, the wealthy citizens of Paris, the returning Girondists, many of whom had become pronounced royalists, the new deputies, the officers who in some turn of the wheel had, like himself, lost their positions, but were now, through his favor, reinstated--all these he strove to court, flatter, and make his own.