Disdaining all forms of rhetoric, he poured forth a torrent of ideas, clothing them in the first words that came to his facile tongue, enforcing them by blows of the fist or the most violent gestures, and yet, again, modulating the roar of passion to the falsetto of satire or the whisper of emotion.

His short, thick-set frame, vibrating with strength, doubled the force of all his utterances.

Nor did they lack the glamour of poetry and romance that might be expected from his Italian ancestry.

He came of a Genoese stock that had for some time settled in the South of France.

Strange fate, that called him now to the front with the aim of repairing the ills wrought to France by another Italian House! In time of peace his power over men would have raised him to the highest positions had his Bohemian exuberance of thought and speech been tameable.