ambitious a successful intermediary with those in power. Preferring, as she rather ostentatiously asserted, to be guided by another's will, she gave little thought to her children, or to the sad legacy of her husband's good name. She emulated, outwardly at least, the unprincipled worldliness of those about her, although her friends believed her kind-hearted and virtuous. Whatever her true nature was, she had influence among the foremost men of that gay set which was imitating the court circles of old, and an influence which had become not altogether agreeable to the immoral Provençal noble who entertained and supported the giddy coterie. Perhaps the extravagance of the languid Creole was as trying to Barras as it became afterward to her second husband. [Footnote 59: See Pulitzer: Une idylle sous Napoléon I.] The meeting of Napoleon and Josephine was an event of the first importance.[60] His own account twice relates that a beautiful and tearful boy presented himself, soon after the disarmament of the sections, to the commander of the city, and asked for the sword of his father. The request was granted, and next day the boy's mother, Mme. Beauharnais, came to thank the general for his kindly act of restitution. Captivated by her grace, Buonaparte was thenceforward her slave. A cold critic must remember that in the first place there was no disarmament of anybody after the events of October fifth, the only action of the Convention which might even be construed into hostility being a decree making emigrants ineligible for election to the legislature under the new constitution; that in the second place this story attributes to destiny what was really due to the friendship of Barras, a fact which his beneficiary would have liked to forget or conceal; and finally, that the beneficiary left another account in which he confessed that he had first met his wife at Barras's house, this being confirmed by Lucien in his memoirs. Of the passion there is no doubt; it was a composite emotion, made up in part of sentiment, in part of self-interest. Those who are born to rude and simple conditions in life are often dazzled by the charmed etiquette and mysterious forms of artificial society. Napoleon never affected to have been born to the manner, nor did he ever pretend to have adopted its exacting self-control, for he could not; although after the winter of 1795 he frequently displayed a weak and exaggerated regard for social conventions. It was not that he had need to assume a false and superficial polish, or that he particularly cared to show his equality with those accustomed to polite society; but that he probably conceived the splendid display and significant formality of that ancient nobility which had so cruelly snubbed him from the outset as being, nevertheless, the best conceivable prop to a throne. [Footnote 60: Mémorial, II, 258; III, 402.]