Let the reader for one moment imagine himself on the Imperial Pavilion, with at his side a convenient friend who knows everybody, to point the marshals out. That short, spare, low-browed, swarthy, Italian-faced man, with crafty, pitiless eyes, is Masséna--“L’Enfant chéri de la Victoire,” as Napoleon himself hailed him on the battlefield; the very ablest undoubtedly of all the Marshals. He knows it too. When the list of the Marshals first came out, a friend called on Masséna to know if it was true that he was one, and to congratulate him. “Oh yes, thank you,” replied Masséna in an icy tone, puckering up his dark face with a sour look, “I am one; _one of fourteen_!” He’s Italian in blood and breeding, and in his tricky ways; every point about him: but he’d give his soul to be a Frenchman! “Massène” is what he is always trying to get people to call him. And the airs and self-importance he assumes--though only like most of the others in that, indeed--ever since he became “Monseigneur le Maréchal” and has had the honour of being addressed as “Mon Cousin” by the Emperor! Just think of it! In the old days, behind the counter of that little olive-oil and dried-fruit shop up a narrow, smelly back street at Antibes, plain “Citoyen André” was good enough! Just look at that thin, pouting chest, gleaming all over with gold embroidery, with the broad crimson riband of the Legion of Honour slanting across it, and the aggressive tilt of his ostrich-plumed hat! Imagine all that being once upon a time just a cabin-boy on a Marseilles to Leghorn coaster, half-starved and sworn at and cuffed and kicked about by a curmudgeonly _padrone_! Then fancy it a sneaking smuggler, chevied about, and crouching along to keep out of carbine shot of the Nice _douaniers_! After that Sergeant Masséna of the late King’s _Royal Italien_ regiment of the Line! And so to the bâton.