Uncertainty ever preyed on Bonaparte's ardent imagination.

His was a mind that quailed not before visible dangers; but, with all its powers of decisive action, it retained so much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe at the unknown,[58] and to lose for the moment the faculty of forming a vigorous resolution.

Like the python, which grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its full constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a groundwork of fact for the due exercise of his mental force.
One of a group of generals, whom he had assembled about him near Montechiaro, proposed that they should ascend the hill which dominated the plain.

Even from its ridge no Austrians were to be seen.

Again the commander burst forth with petulant reproaches, and even talked of retiring to the Adda.