Like a good condottiere, he does not commit himself, considers the first that offers and then the one who offers the most, only to back out afterwards, and finally, seizing the opportunity, to grab everything .-- He will more and more become a true condottiere, that is to say, leader of a band, increasingly independent, pretending to submit under the pretext of the public good, looking out only for his own interest, self-centered, general on his own account and for his own advantage in his Italian campaign before and after the 18th of Fructidor.[1129] He is, however, a condottiere of the first class, already aspiring to the loftiest summits, "with no stopping-place but the throne or the scaffold,"[1130] "determined[1131] to master France, and through France Europe.

Without distraction, sleeping only three hours during the night," he plays with ideas, men, religions, and governments, exploiting people with incomparable dexterity and brutality.

He is, in the choice of means as of ends, a superior artist, inexhaustible in glamour, seductions, corruption, and intimidation, fascinating, and yet more terrible than any wild beast suddenly released among a herd of browsing cattle.

The expression is not too strong and was uttered by an eye-witness, almost at this very date, a friend and a competent diplomat: "You know that, while I am very fond of the dear general, I call him to myself the little tiger, so as to properly characterize his figure, tenacity, and courage, the rapidity of his movements, and all that he has in him which maybe fairly regarded in that sense."[1132] At this very date, previous to official adulation and the adoption of a recognized type, we see him face to face in two portraits drawn from life, one physical, by a truthful painter, Guerin, and the other moral, by a superior woman, Madame de Stael, who to the best European culture added tact and worldly perspicacity.

Both portraits agree so perfectly that each seems to interpret and complete the other.