removal to the Tuileries, and precisely on that day the national mourning
for Washington was to cease, for which a general mourning for freedom
might well have been substituted.

I have said very little about Murat in the course of these Memoirs except
mentioning the brilliant part he performed in several battles. Having
now arrived at the period of his marriage with one of Napoleon's sisters
I take the opportunity of returning to the interesting events which
preceded that alliance.

His fine and well-proportioned form, his great physical strength and
somewhat refined elegance of manner,--the fire of his eye, and his fierce
courage in battle, gave to Murat rather the character of one of those
'preux chevaliers' so well described by Ariosto and Taro, that, that a
Republican soldier. The nobleness of his look soon made the lowness of
his birth be forgotten. He was affable, polished, gallant; and in the
field of battle twenty men headed by Murat were worth a whole regiment.
Once only he showed himself under the influence of fear, and the reader
shall see in what circumstance it was that he ceased to be himself.

--[Marshal Lannes, so brave and brilliant in war and so well able to
appreciate courage, one day sharply rebuked a colonel for having
punished a young officer just arrived from school at Fontainebleau
because he gave evidence of fear in his first engagement. "Know,
colonel," said he, "none but a poltroon (the term was oven more
strong) will boast that he never was afraid."--Bourrienne.]--

When Bonaparte in his first Italian campaign had forced Wurmser to
retreat into Mantua with 28,000 men, he directed Miollis, with only 4000
men, to oppose any sortie that might be attempted by the Austrian