On the evening of the 28th of May, 1797, at the moment when, his glorious campaign in Italy finished, Bonaparte was enthroned with Josephine at Montebello, surrounded by ministers from foreign courts; when the Corinthian horses, having descended from the Duomo, and the Lion of Saint Mark, having fallen from its column, were on their way to Paris; when Pichegru, relieved from service on account of vague suspicions, had just been made president of the Five Hundred, and Barbé-Marbois president of the Ancients a horseman, who was travelling, as Virgil says, "under the friendly silence of the moon" ("Per amica silentia lune"), and who was trotting upon a powerful horse along the road from Mâcon to Bourg, left that road a little above the village of Polias. He jumped, or rather made his horse jump, the ditch which separated the road from the plowed fields, and followed the banks of the river Veyle for about five hundred yards, where he was not liable to meet either villager or traveller.
There, doubtless no longer fearing to be recognized or noticed, he allowed his coat to slip from his shoulders to the saddle, thereby discovering a belt in which he carried two pistols and a hunting-knife. Then he lifted his hat and wiped his perspiring forehead. The traveller was a young man of twenty-eight or nine years of age, handsome, distinguished, and well-built; and it was evident that he was prepared to repel force by force if any one should have the temerity to attack him.
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