had a very great capacity, but he is a striking example of the great truth that our passions are always bad counsellors.
By inspiring us with an immoderate ardour to reach a fixed end, they often make us miss it.

Bourrienne had an immoderate love of money.

With his talents and his position near Bonaparte at the first dawn of greatness, with the confidence and real good-will which Bonaparte felt for him, in a few years he would have gained everything in fortune and in social position.

But his eager impatience mined his career at the moment when it might have developed and increased" (Marmont, i.

64).