His imagination inscribed, in anticipation, his name on those gigantic monuments which alone, perhaps, of all the creations of man, have the character of eternity.

Already proclaimed the most illustrious of living generals, he sought to efface the rival names of antiquity by his own.

If Caesar fought fifty battles, he longed to fight a hundred--if Alexander left Macedon to penetrate to the Temple of Ammon, he wished to leave Paris to travel to the Cataracts of the Nile.

While he was thus to run a race with fame, events would, in his opinion, so proceed in France as to render his return necessary and opportune.

His place would be ready for him, and he should not come to claim it a forgotten or unknown man..