IN WHICH THE READER WILL MEET SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES  
We must now ask our readers to follow us to Milan, where, as we have said, Bonaparte, who no longer called himself Buonaparte, had his headquarters.
The same day, and at the very hour when Diane de Fargas recovered her brother in so pitiful and tragic a manner, three men came out of the barracks of the Army of Italy, while three others issued from the adjacent barracks, which were occupied by the Army of the Rhine. General Bonaparte had demanded a reinforcement after his first victories, and two thousand men had been detached from Moreau's army, and sent, under command of Bernadotte, to the Army of Italy.
The six men made their way toward the eastern gate, walking in two separate groups, each at a little distance from the other. This was the gate behind which occurred the numerous duels which resulted from personal rivalry[Pg 437] of valor, and the differences of opinion between the soldiers from the North and those who had always fought in the South.
An army is always modelled upon the characteristics of its general. His peculiarities extend to his officers, and from them they spread to the soldiers. The division of the Rhine, which had come South under Bernadotte's command, was formed upon Moreau's model.
The royalist faction looked longingly toward Moreau and Pichegru. The latter had been all ready to yield, but he had wearied of the indecision of the Prince de Condé. Nor had he been willing to introduce the enemy into France without having determined beforehand the conditions which should circumscribe the rights of the prince whom he was admitting, as well as those of the people who were to receive him. Nothing had actually taken place between himself and the Prince de Condé except a correspondence which had borne no fruit. He had, moreover, resolved to bring about this revolution, not through his military influence, but through that of the high position which his fellow-citizens had bestowed upon him in making him president of the Five Hundred.
Moreau's Republicanism could not be shaken. Careless, moderate, unemotional, with no taste for politics beyond his capacity, he held himself in reserve, sufficiently nattered by the praise which his friends and the royalists had bestowed upon his masterly retreat from the Danube, which they likened to that of Xenophon.
His army, therefore, was like him, cold, phlegmatic and submissive to his discipline. The Army of Italy, on the contrary, was composed of our Southern revolutionists—brave hearts who were as impulsive in their opinions as in their courage.
Having been the centre for more than a year and a half of the glory which the French arms were reaping before the eyes of all Europe, the attention of that continent was fixed upon them. It could pride itself, not upon masterly re[Pg 438]treats, but upon victories. Instead of being forgotten by the government, as were the armies of the Rhine and the Sambre-et-Meuse, generals, officers and soldiers were overwhelmed with praise and honors, gorged with money and sated with pleasure. Serving first under General Bonaparte—that is to say, under the star which had been shedding a light so brilliant that it had dazzled all Europe—then under Generals Masséna, Joubert, and Augereau, who set the example of the most ardent republicanism, they were, by order of Bonaparte, kept informed of the events which were transpiring at Paris (through the medium of the journals which the general circulated among them), that is to say, of a reaction which threatened to equal that of Vendémiaire. To these men—who did not form their opinions by discussion, but who received them ready-made—the Directory, the heir and successor of the Convention, was still the revolutionary government to whom their services were devoted, as in 1792. They asked but one thing, now that they had conquered the Austrians and thought that they had nothing more to do in Italy, and that was to cross the Alps again, in order to put the aristocrats in Paris to the sword.
These two groups on their way to the Eastern gate presented a fair sample of the two armies.
One—which, as its uniform denoted, belonged to that tireless infantry which, starting from the foot of the Bastille, had made the tour of the world—consisted of Sergeant-major Faraud, w............