There were to be seen Italian nobles, literati, and artists, counting it the highest honour to visit the liberator of their land; and to them Bonaparte behaved with that mixture of affability and inner reserve, of seductive charm alternating with incisive cross-examination which proclaimed at once the versatility of his gifts, the keenness of his intellect, and his determination to gain social, as well as military and political, supremacy.

And yet the occasional abruptness of his movements, and the strident tones of command lurking beneath his silkiest speech, now and again reminded beholders that he was of the camp rather than of the court.

To his generals he was distant; for any fault even his favourite officers felt the full force of his anger; and aides-de-camp were not often invited to dine at his table.

Indeed, he frequently dined before his retinue, almost in the custom of the old Kings of France.
With him was his mother, also his brothers, Joseph and Louis, whom he was rapidly advancing to fortune.

There, too, were his sisters; Elise, proud and self-contained, who at this period married a noble but somewhat boorish Corsican, Bacciocchi; and Pauline, a charming girl of sixteen, whose hand the all-powerful brother offered to Marmont, to be by him unaccountably refused, owing, it would seem, to a prior attachment.