I'm John Batchez, speaking with Professor Anne Higone at Barnard College of Art History.

Liberty, Quality, Fashion is her new book, The Women Who Stiled the French Revolution.

It is now the directory in Paris.

I believe the year is 95, might be 96, the professor will help me.

And Teresa, who has emerged from the terror and is now Madame Talion,

is holding a salon, as she usually does, gathering all the very well-spoken men of the

directory and their hangers on, men who were in prison and have now emerged. There's

sort of a bond between everybody who thought they were going to be

executed every morning and the people who learned from them what it was like. But the director

is very powerful. France is gaining money again. We're in Paris. And Teresia and Rose are

pals, friends, and they're circling these men together. Remember, they need to find a way to get money.

Women are not necessarily empowered to have their own finances in 1795.

And in walks of Corsigan in shoddy clothes.

And Teresa gave him money, I believe, to help him dress better.

Was he insulted by that?

We'll never know.

He certainly was subjugated by her beauty and her style.

So much so that he also became entranced with her best friend,

who had less of the beauty, but just as much of the style.

And that's the beginning of the legendary relationship between Napoleon and Josephine.

It's hard to believe it was a moment, but it's like the moment out of the prison.

It happened.

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