BOOKS.

MEMOIRS OF BARRAS.* THE new volumes of the Memoirs of Barras show their writer in quite as nnamiable a light as did the first two. The sense of disgust and indignation is indeed strengthened by the new instalment. There is probably more hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness collected in these four thick volumes than in any other work of biographical literature. The mind is appalled by the thought of this vile old man, surely the most hard-hearted and hard-headed of political profligates that the world has ever seen, sitting down to secrete these oceans of rancid venom. Think of what the man must have been who used that interval between life and death which is given to those who attain a great age to write as Barras writes. Men have written worse slanders and told wolse lies than Barras, and yet not produced so evil an im- pression. The rank luxuriance of the ordinary calum- niator somehow takes away from his effect. There is always something ineffective in mere Billingsgate. Then, too, the ordinary calumniator pours his filth on good and noble men and women, or, at any rate, on those who have some honesty in them. That annoys us into a pleasant reaction of content, and by an inverse process the good deeds of the slandered are recalled to warm and refresh our minds. But in Barras there is neither the wild enormity of vituperation nor the fouling of noble names and the abuse of noble natures. His lies and slanders and sneers are dry, crackling, ashy things, without a drop of human blood in them. Again, he deals with a set of the vilest creatures that God ever per- mitted to crawl between earth and heaven. We may suspect he lies when he tells of Napoleon's treacheries and falsehoods, and of his intolerable baseness of heart, of Talleyrand's damning wickedness, and degradation ten times degraded, and of Josephine's vileness ; but when these names are befouled, indignation can call up to relieve our disgust no brighter pictures, no glimpses of heroism which may in some measure restore our equanimity of mind. Barras, we feel sure, is lying, but only about men to whose lives no lie, however hideous, can do harm. Can we wonder that Barras's book is sombre, gloomy, callous beyond experience ; nay, beyond endurance ? We can only compare him to the cobra, grown a dead white with age, that Mr.andyard Kipling describes in his last Jungle-Book. The picture of the hideous blinded monster breaking his teeth, now dry of venom, on the steel, is Barras to the life. We look in on him in his hole, writhing his loathsome, pallid body in the dust, and striking his dry fangs against all that comes in his way.

In the new volumes one of the most striking things is the description of how Napoleon returned from Egypt and found that Josephine had been unfaithful to him, as he had been to her, and more, had made her want of fidelity a public scandal. Here is Barras's account of how Napoleon asked him his advice, and how he gave it

"In the early days of his return from Egypt, I was justified in believing that Bonaparte was on the same confidential footing • Memoirs of Barns; Memb.r.of the Directorate. Edited, with a General Intro- auction, Pretaors, and Apper.dace., by George Darcy. Trs.nelated by Charles E. Rocks. Vac. ILL and Iv. Laudon: Osgood. Menvalne, and Co. with me as in the early days when his promotion and his marriage were at issue. For, as if ;renewing a conversation interrupted on the preceding day, he told me all that a friend should know of what had happened in relation to these matters during the past four piers, entering into the most intimate details about his con- jugal position, in connection with the behaviour of his fair one during his absence. It did not seem to me that he felt perfectly* secure of her fidelity during that absence, which had lasted over eighteen months. I told him that philosophy was needed in such a case ; that I too had been absent from my wife ; and that while not suffering my feeling of security to be dependent on the virtue of my wife, although I considered her the most virtuous of her sex, I should not worry my brain and make myself wretched, did I entertain a contrary opinion. I dwelt strongly on the necessity of philosophy, mindful of the mot of Kleber to an officer of his army who spoke to him of the uneasiness he felt at being separated from his wife : 'Comrade, the husband who is at a greater dis- tance than six inches from his wife, must make the best of it.' On my telling him that philosophy was necessary,' he replied : That is easy to say,' sighing deeply the while, although it was not his wont to give way to this kind of demonstration. He then unfolded to me a number of strange particulars, telling me that at the time of his marriage he had not been ignorant of the fact that Mine. de Beauharnais had been separated from her first husband. Alexander; that she had lived with Hoche, with his aides-de camp, and oven with her inferiors; that when marrying her he thought there would be an end to all this, and that sba would not begin such a life again. She had been a widow; well, a widow is like a girl who is free ; each is mistress of her actions. This does not apply to a woman who marries again ; she should be true to her vows ; therein lies an obligatory discipline towards- the social order, one more indispensable than military discipline for the consequences of an infringement of these vows is the sub- version and annihilation of all social order. After having forgiven his wife all her antecedents, he had believed sho would behave better and turn over a new leaf. In lieu of this, her scandalous conduct had never ceased even when with the Army of Italy, whither he had summoned her in order to have her at his side, to give her in the intervals of fighting every amusement, and to make her participate in all the felicitations likely to cause her joy and give her pleasure. She had ever sought her happiness in love affairs ; it was either a cavalry or an infantry officer,. or even conscripts ; the latest had been one little Charles, on whose behalf she had committed every kind of extravagance. giving him enormous sums of money, and even jewellery, as if to a woman of easy virtue. All that Bonaparte was confiding- to ma he had learnt, so he said, from the reports of Joseph and Lucien, who had conceived the idea of separating him from his wife, in order to alone remain in possession of all the advantages of his fortune."

Barras goes on to say that Bonaparte took his advice to be reconciled to his wife and to forgive her, from the basest

motives :—

" Bonaparte seemed to chime in with my remarks in no wise from any motives of the heart, but, as ever, in the interest of his ambition. He did not wish to run the risk of losing in a single minute all he had sowed for several years in the soil of this ambition. Well then, I am one with you, citizen Director ; you married me for the first time four years ago ; you marry me again. to-day with your good advice ; I will follow it.' So it was that, married a first time from motives of interest, he married again, sa to speak, from the same motives."

In order to enhance his picture of the baseness and savagery of Napoleon's nature Barras quotes some of the letters addressed by Napoleon to his Generals when in Egypt. Barras declares them to be authentic documents, and says they can be verified from official documents. We presume that they must be genuine, as the editor, who dislikes Barras, does not brand them as forgeries. Here are one or two of the letters in question :— "‘ 17th October, 1798. To General Marmont.

It would give me pleasure were you able to get the intriguing Abdala, the intendant of Murad Bey, hanged. I would gladly give a thousand ecus for his person. If the word could be spoken to a few Arabs, those fellows would do a great deal for a thousand sequins: It has since been asked [adds Barras] whether by any chance Métier's Arab assassin received them."

"To General Desaix.

Murad Bey has become so insignificant with his few hundred men mounted on camels, that you can follow him into the desert and destroy him."

"To the same.

I leave you free to grant Murad Bey any terms of peace you may see fit. I will give him his old farm near Gizeh ; he is not to be allowed to keep more than ten armed Inca; but if you could rid us of him it would be a great deal better than all these arrangements."

"To General Reynier.

The way to punish the villages in revolt is to take the Sheik- el-Beled and cut off his head."

"To the same.

The insurgents of Cairo have lost two thousand men. Every night we cut off some thirty heads, and those of many chiefs. This will, I believe, teach them a good lesson."

"To General Murat.

You will proceed to the village of Gamiu;eh, in the province of Alfieti, where dwell the Agdeh and Maseh tribes, which have one hundred men mounted on camels, and which are hostile tribes. You will so arrange your march as to fall unexpectedly upon the camp and capture camels, cattle, women, children, old men, and such of those Arabs as are unmounted. You will kill all the men you cannot bring away with you."

"To the Citizen Poussielgue.

I have urged upon General Dugua the necessity of striking bard on the earliest opportunity. Let him cut off six heads a day ; but continue being of good cheer."

No doubt the French army, living in the midst of a hostile

population, had to protect itself by severe measures, but such atrocities as these were totally unnecessary. They show the mediteval Italian leader of mercenaries. We were ruth- less during the Mutiny, but conceive Sir Hugh Rose or Sir Henry Havelock issuing such orders as these. We have dealt chiefly with Barras's accounts of Napoleon and his wife, not because there are not plenty of other matters of interest in these volumes, but in order to concentrate Barras's torrents of abuse into a single channel. His account of the 18th Brumaire, for example, is excellent, as also are the later portions of the Memoirs,—those dealing with the Restoration. We will, however, end as we have begun, with Josephine and Napoleon. Here is Barraa's account of Josephine's death, and the " scene " made by Napoleon at

her grave :—

" 1815. The Truth about Josephine.—Bonaparte's character can be further judged from the following trait connected with Josephine, buried at La Malmaison. I have, in the course of these Memoirs, recorded several circumstances referring to the matrimonial union of Bonaparte and his first wife ; it will have readily been seen how little there was of true love in this affair, and what an important part intrigue played in it. It has been seen, at the time of the divorce required to enable him to marry Marie-Louise, what a small part sentiment played between the two divorced persons, as compared with policy and interest, since, on Josephine's at first refusing to yield a position so important to her and to her own, Bonaparte made no other remark than : .` Come now, to calm her I shall give her another million!' Now this gift of a million and the appanage of Navarre, besides so many estates and personal property which it cost Bonaparte so little to give, since he always gave what did not belong to him, -were the price of Josephine's alleged resignation. The ex- Empress had called to aid, in her dealings with the allied kings who had come to Paris in 1814, all her coquettish blandishments, which, as usual, and in regard to all those who held power with -whom she came into contact from first to last, had no other -object than that of obtaining more money in addition to what she possessed, and it is a known fact that this greedy and prodigal woman had never had enough of it. In that hypo- -critical retirement at La Malmaison Josephine had ceased to live, carried away by a disease which medical science, as is often the case, could not define, but which was looked upon as a genuine putrefaction, an anticipated dissolution : it was the result of a life agitated by intrigue and consumed by debauchery. This woman has been given a trousseau of extraordinary virtues since her demise. It has especially been sought to attribute kindness to her, and it is the correct thing to speak of her as kind Josephine.' This trivial qualification, which would be an honourable one were it deserved, recalls to my mind the distich which appeared at the death of Louis XV.:

Louis, ce panvre rot;

On cht gall fat bon, nlais i quei ?

It was circulated that, on learning of the death of Josephine, Bonaparte was strangely affected by it, and those who thought him susceptible of at least some personal affection, imagined that he sincerely regretted his former consort. Others there were who perhaps thought that the vicissitudes which had followed his divorce, and which were separating him now and for ever perhaps from Marie-Louise and his son, had possibly reacted on his superstitious imagination. It is true that fortune had smiled on him in almost every case during his union with Josephine, although I do not think the woman was a protecting star. It may at most be believed, and this with some show of reason, that Bonaparte, not having reached the apogee of his frenzy previous to his divorce, had up to then been saved from himself by a kind of instinct of self-preservation, akin even to prudence. I learnt that Bonaparte, having gone to La Malmaison, and having strolled about the grounds for some time, had come across Josephine's grave. He had appeared to he plunged in a kind of reverie, which could be taken for grief (a grief without tears, for Napoleon never shed any; but he was acquainted with the saying of Macbeth, and he more than once said in the course of his terrible career: 'Could I but weep !'). His courtiers respectfully pressed forward to prevent his seeing the spot he had been the first to perceive. Bonaparte quickly relieved them 'of their embarramsment. Suddenly awakening from his sham reverie, he exclaimed abruptly, as was his wont : So 'tis here that the Empress Josephine is buried ? Why was she not buried at Saint-Denis ? ' As, naturally enough, no one replied to so unexpected a question, one indeed put to himself, he pursued with a show of .111-temper, not to say anger: 'After all, there is no cause to xeirret not having been burled at Saint-Danis, one need not be in a hurry to lie side by side with Contbon, Saint- Just, and Robespierre, for, with all their exhumations of the 31st of January, the Bourbons, instead of recovering the bones of Louis XVI., eaten away by lime, secured only those of the members of the Committee of Public Safety and of the Commune executed on the 9th Thermidor, whose bodies were cast into the cemetery of La Madeleine, for they are truly the last victims who lost their lives on the Place de la Revolution !' This then was the sum total of Bonaparte's sadness and affliction. The vain individual was on this occasion, as on all others, true to his nature of parvenu, as Carnot so aptly christened him ; he must needs, when standing by the grave-side, prove that there still remained in him the sentiment of arrogance, as well as the stubborn concealment of his origin, which the severest lessons could not correct."