His ambition and his pride could not endure the alternative of no longer being prominent or of accepting a post which, however eminent, would have always subjected him to the orders of the Directory."] [Footnote 1240: Madame de Remusat, I., 142.

"Josephine laid great stress on the Egyptian expedition as the cause of his change of temper and of the daily despotism which made her suffer so much."-- "Mes souvenirs sur Napoleon," 325 by the count Chaptal.

(Bonaparte's own words to the poet Lemercier who might have accompanied him to the Middle East and there would have learned many things about human nature): "You would have seen a country where the sovereign takes no account of the lives of his subjects, and where the subject himself takes no account of his own life.

You would have got rid of your philanthropic 'notions."] [Footnote 1241: Roederer, III., 461 (Jan.

12, 1803)] [Footnote 1242: Cf.