Accordingly, the first duchy he creates is for Marshal Lefebvre "purposely," as he says,[3351] because "this marshal had been a private and everybody in Paris had known him as a sergeant in the French guards." -- With such an example before them, and so many others like it, not less striking, there is no ambition that does not become exalted, and often to delirium.
"At this time," says Stendhal, who seized the master-idea of the reign, "there was no apothecary's apprentice in his back shop, surrounded by his drugs and bottles, filtering and pounding away in his mortar, who did not say to himself that, if he chanced to make some great discovery, he would be made a count with fifty thousand francs a year." In those days there was no under-clerk who, in his labored penmanship, inscribed names on a piece of parchment, that did not imagine his own name appearing some day on a senatorial or ministerial diploma.

At this time the youthful corporal who dons his first stripes of gold braid already fancies that he hears the beating of the drums, the blast of the trumpet, and the salvos of artillery which proclaim him marshal of the Empire.[3352] V.Self-esteem and a good Reputation.
The inward spring from 1789 to 1815 .-- Its force .-- Its decline .-- How it ends in breaking the machine down.
A new force, extraordinary, is just apparent in history, a spiritual force analogous to that which formerly stimulated souls in Spain in the sixteenth century, in European the time of the crusades, and in Arabia in the time of Mahomet.

It stimulates the faculties to excess, increases energy tenfold, transports man beyond or above himself, creates enthusiasts and heroes, blinding or rendering men crazy, and hence the irresistible conquerors and rulers.

It stamps its imprint and leaves its memorials in ineffaceable characters on men and things from Cadiz to Moscow.

It overrides all natural barriers and transcends all ordinary limits.