It's their element, anyhow." They gave him some details of the Italian campaign, and he was charmed to learn that the 23d had taken a redoubt under the eyes of the Marshal the Duke of Solferino.
"That's the habit of the regiment," said he, shedding tears in his napkin.

"That brigand of a 23d will never act in any other way.

The goddess of Victory has touched it with her wing." One of the things, for example, which greatly astonished him, was that a war of such importance was finished up in so short a time.

He had yet to learn that within a few years the world had learned the secret of transporting a hundred thousand men, in four days, from one end of Europe to the other.
"Good!" said he; "I admit the practicability of it.

But what astonishes me is, that the Emperor did not invent this affair in 1810; for he had a genius for transportation, a genius for administration, a genius for office details, a genius for everything.