He believed he carried his own public with him wherever he went,--an error shared by several of the great men of Paris.
While the poet made a studied and effective entrance into the salon of the Chalet, La Briere slipped in behind him like a person of no account.
"Ha! do I see my soldier ?" said Canalis, perceiving Dumay, after addressing a compliment to Madame Mignon, and bowing to the other women.
"Your anxieties are relieved, are they not ?" he said, offering his hand effusively; "I comprehend them to their fullest extent after seeing mademoiselle.

I spoke to you of terrestrial creatures, not of angels." All present seemed by their attitudes to ask the meaning of this speech.
"I shall always consider it a triumph," resumed the poet, observing that everybody wished for an explanation, "to have stirred to mention on of those men of iron whom Napoleon had the eye to find and make the supporting piles on which he tried to build an empire, too colossal to be lasting: for such structures time alone is the cement.

But this triumph--why should I be proud of it ?--I count for nothing.

It was the triumph of ideas over facts.

Your battles, my dear Monsieur Dumay, your heroic charges, Monsieur le comte, nay, war itself was the form in which Napoleon's idea clothed itself.