(He was postmaster-general): "It often happened to me that I was not as certain as he was of distances and of many details in my administration on which he was able to set me straight."-- On returning from the camp at Bologna, Napoleon encounters a squad of soldiers who had got lost, asks what regiment they belong to, calculates the day they left, the road they took, what distance they should have marched.
and then tells them, "You will find your battalion at such a halting place."-- At this time, "the army numbered 200,000 men."] [Footnote 1161: Madame de Remusat, I., 103, 268.] [Footnote 1162: Thibaudeau, p.25, I (on the Jacobin survivors): "They are nothing but common artisans, painters, etc., with lively imaginations, a little better instructed than the people, living amongst the people and exercising influence over them."-- Madame de Remusat, I., 271 (on the royalist party): "It is very easy to deceive that party because its starting-point is not what it is, but what it would like to have."-- I., 337: "The Bourbons will never see anything except through the Oeil de Boeuf."-- Thibaudeau, p.46: "Insurrections and emigrations are skin diseases; terrorism is an internal malady." Ibid., 75: "What now keeps the spirit of the army up is the idea soldiers have that they occupy the places of former nobles."] [Footnote 1163: Thibaudeau, pp.419 to 452.

(Both texts are given in separate columns.) And passim, for instance, p.84, the following portrayal of the decadal system of worship under the Republic: "It was imagined that citizens could be got together in churches, to freeze with cold and hear, read, and study laws, in which there was already but little fun for those who executed them." Another example of the way in which his ideas expressed themselves through imagery (Pelet de la Lozere, p.

242): "I am not satisfied with the customs regulations on the Alps.

They show no life.

We don't hear the rattle of crown pieces pouring into the public treasury." To appreciate the vividness of Napoleon's expressions and thought the reader must consult, especially, the five or six long conversations, noted on the very evening of the day they occurred by Roederer; the two or three conversations likewise noted by Miot de Melito; the scenes narrated by Beugnot; the notes of Pelet de la Lozere and by Stanislas de Girardin, and nearly the entire volume by Thibaudeau.] [Footnote 1164: Pelet de la Lozere, 63, 64.