With such strong chances in his favor, it appeared to Buonaparte that no stumbling-block of technicality should be thrown in the path of his promotion. Accordingly, in the record of his life sent up to Paris, he puts his entrance into the service over a year earlier than it actually occurred, omits as unessential details some of the places in which he had lived and some of the companies in which he had served, declares that he had commanded a battalion at the capture of Magdalena, and, finally, denies categorically that he was ever noble. To this paper, which minimizes nearly to the vanishing-point all mention of Corsica, and emphasizes his services as a Frenchman by its insidious omissions, the over-driven officials in Paris took no exception; and on February sixth, 1794, he was confirmed, receiving an assignment for service in the new and regenerated Army of Italy, which had replaced as if by magic the ragged, shoeless, ill-equipped, and half-starved remnants of troops in and about Nice that in the previous year had been dignified by the same title. This gambler had not drawn the first prize in the lottery, but what he had secured was enough to justify his course, and confirm his confidence in fate. Eight years and three months nominally in the service, out of which in reality he had been absent four years and ten months either on furlough or without one, and already a general! Neither blind luck, nor the revolutionary epoch, nor the superlative ability of the man, but a compound of all these, had brought this marvel to pass. It did not intoxicate, but still further sobered, the beneficiary. This effect was partly due to an experience which demonstrated that strong as are the chains of habit, they are more easily broken than those which his associates forge about a man. In the interval between nomination and confirmation the young aspirant, through the fault of his friends, was involved in a most serious risk. Salicetti, and the Buonaparte brothers, Joseph, Lucien, and Louis, went wild with exultation over the fall of Toulon, and began by reckless assumptions and untruthful representations to reap an abundant harvest of spoils. Joseph, by the use of his brother's Corsican commission, had posed as a lieutenant-colonel; he was now made a commissary-general of the first class. Louis, without regard to his extreme youth, was promoted to be adjutant-major of artillery--a dignity which was short-lived, for he was soon after ordered to the school at Châlons as a cadet, but which served, like the greater success of Joseph, to tide over a crisis. Lucien retained his post as keeper of the commissary stores in St. Maximin, where he was the leading Jacobin, styling himself Lucius Brutus, and rejoicing in the sobriquet of "the little Robespierre."