The Companions of Jehu, as Dumas tells us in his "An Introductory Word to the Reader," was inspired by a story he had read in Charles Nodier's Souvenirs de la Revolution of four young highwaymen, belonging to a band called the Company of Jehu, who fought their way out of a prison in order to avoid the guillotine. His son provided him with outlines for two characters for the tale,"an English gentleman and a French captain," the latter being "a mysterious character, who courts death with all his might, without being able to accomplish his desire." These are Lord Tanley, who goes by the quintessentially English "Sir John," and Roland de Montrevel, aide-de-camp to and best friend of the man called General Bonaparte at the beginning of this novel. While Dumas weaves a wonderfully romantic tale involving Roland, Sir John, and the Companions of Jehu, here transformed into a band of aristocratic royalists, robbing government diligences in support their righteous cause, Napoleon's story dominates. As Dumas himself acknowledges: But we are writing a simple narrative, in which Bonaparte shows himself, if only for a moment, he becomes, in spite of himself, a principal personage. The reader must pardon us for having again fallen into digression; that man, who is a world in himself, has, against our will, swept us along in his whirlwind. The action begins when General Bonaparte, accompanied by Roland, returns from the Egyptian campaign and continues through such legendary events as the 18th Brumaire, which instigated the dissolution of the Republic by making Napoleon First Consul, and the establishment of the Bonaparts in the Tuileries, ending with the Battle of Marengo. The historical details are precise and stunning. Readers of Sandra Gulland's Josephine Bonaparte trilogy (which I really enjoyed when I read it a few years ago - especially the first book, which kept me up all night) will wonder how much of her account was inspired by Dumas'. Napoleon is, of course, presented as ambitious and daring, but also as indulgent and loving, if in a rather dictatorial and regimented fashion. It is an enthralling portrait. Here is just one example of the many passages in which Dumas allows himself to be "swept ... along in his whirlwind" Bonapoarte had a look for every thought that stirred his soul. In Napoleon, this look, except in the momentous circumstances in his life, ceased to be mobile and became fixed, but even so it was none the less impossible to render; it was a drill sounding the heart of whosoever he looked upon, the deepest, the most secret thought of which he meant to sound. Marble or painting might render the fixedness of that look, but neither the one nor the other could portray its life - this is to say, its penetrating and magnetic action. Troubled hearts have veiled eyes. Bonaparte, even in the days of his leanness, had beautiful hands, and he displayed them with a certain coquetry. As he grew stouter the hands became superb; he took the utmost care of them, and looked at them when talking, with much complacency. He felt the same satisfaction in his teeth, which were handsome, though not with the splendor of his hands. When he walked, either alone of with someone, whether in a room or in a garden, he always bent a little forward, as though his head were heavy to carry, and crossed his hands behind his back. He frequently made an involuntary movement with the right shoulder, as if a nervous shudder had passed through it, and at the same time his mouth made a curious movement from the right to left, which seemed to result from the other. These movements, however, had nothing convulsive about them, whatever may have been said notwithstanding; they were a simple trick indicative of a great preoccupation, a sort of congestion of the mind. It was chiefly manifested when the general, the First Consul, or the Emperor, was maturing vast plans."