He was now almost alone.

Marmont had gone off to the Army of the Rhine; but Junot was still with him, allured perhaps by Madame Permon's daughter, whom he subsequently married.

At the house of this amiable hostess, an old friend of his family, Buonaparte found occasional relief from the gloom of his existence.

The future Madame Junot has described him as at this time untidy, unkempt, sickly, remarkable for his extreme thinness and the almost yellow tint of his visage, which was, however, lit up by "two eyes sparkling with keenness and will-power"-- evidently a Corsican falcon, pining for action, and fretting its soaring spirit in that vapid town life.

Action Buonaparte might have had, but only of a kind that he loathed.