to himself.  That’s why all those who followed him, even his nearest friends, fell like nuts,—­Duroc, Bessieres, Lannes,—­all strong as steel bars, though he could bend them as he pleased.  Besides,—­to prove he was the child of God, and made to be the father of soldiers,—­was he ever known to be lieutenant or captain? no, no; commander-in-chief from the start.  He didn’t look to be more than twenty-four years of age when he was an old general at the taking of Toulon, where he first began to show the others that they knew nothing about manoeuvring cannon.

“After that, down came our slip of a general to command the grand army of Italy, which hadn’t bread nor munitions, nor shoes, nor coats,—­a poor army, as naked as a worm.  ‘My friends,’ said he, ’here we are together.  Get it into your pates that fifteen days from now you will be conquerors,—­new clothes, good gaiters, famous shoes, and every man with a great-coat; but, my children, to get these things you must march to Milan where they are.’  And we marched.  France, crushed as flat as a bedbug, straightened up.  We were thirty thousand barefeet against eighty thousand Austrian bullies, all fine men, well set up.  I see ’em now!  But Napoleon—­he was then only Bonaparte—­he knew how to put the courage into us!  We marched by night, and we marched by day; we slapped their faces at Montenotte, we thrashed ’em at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcole, Millesimo, and we never let ’em up.  A soldier gets the taste of conquest.  So Napoleon whirled round those Austrian generals, who didn’t know where to poke themselves to get out of his way, and he pelted ’em well,—­nipped off ten thousand men at a blow sometimes, by getting round them with fifteen hundred Frenchmen, and then he gleaned as he pleased.  He took their cannon, their supplies, their money, their munitions, in short, all they had that was good to take.  He fought them and beat them on the mountains, he drove them into the rivers and seas, he bit ’em in the air, he devoured ’em on the ground, and he lashed ’em everywhere.  Hey! the grand army feathered itself well; for, d’ye see, the Emperor, who was also a wit, called up the inhabitants and told them he was there to deliver them.  So after that the natives lodged and cherished us; the women too, and very judicious they were.  Now here’s the end of it.  In Ventose, ’96,—­in those times that was the month of March of to-day,—­we lay cuddled in a corner of Savoy with the marmots; and yet, before that campaign was over, we were masters of Italy, just as Napoleon had predicted; and by the following March—­in a single year and two campaigns—­he had brought us within sight of Vienna.  ’Twas a clean sweep.  We devoured their armies, one after the other, and made an end of four Austrian generals.  One old fellow, with white hair, was roasted like a rat in the straw at Mantua.  Kings begged for mercy on their knees!  Peace was won.

“Could a man have done that?  No; God helped him, to a certainty!