No answer was returned to this memorial, over which he dreamt for some weeks in great enthusiasm.

"How strange," he said to his friends, "would it be if a little Corsican soldier should become King of Jerusalem!" Go where he might, he already contemplated greatness.
At length Napoleon was nominated to the command of a brigade of artillery in Holland.

The long-deferred appointment was, no doubt, very welcome; but in the meantime his services were called for on a nearer and a more important field.
The French nation were now heartily tired of the National Convention: it had lost most of its distinguished members in the tumults and persecutions of the times; and above all it had lost respect by remaining for two years the slave and the tool of the Terrorists.

The downfall of Robespierre, when it did take place, showed how easily the same blessed deliverance might have been effected long before, had this body possessed any sense of firmness or of dignity.

Even the restoration of the members banished by the tyrant did not serve to replace the Convention in the confidence of the public.