All the colonels, majors and captains of this regiment had been killed and he now led it, earning his promotion by the divine right of genius.

He, at least, could look into his knapsack and see there the shadow of a marshal's baton, a shadow that might grow more material.
John watched him and he wondered at this transformation of a rat of Montmartre into a man.

And yet there had been many such transformations in the French Revolution.

What had happened once could always happen again.

Napoleon himself had been the son of a poor little lawyer in a distant and half-savage island, not even French in blood, but an Italian and an alien.
Crash! Another shell burst near, and told him to quit thinking of old times and attend to the business before him.