“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 bed-bug, straightened up.  We were thirty thousand bare-feet 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 them 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 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 Savoie 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!

“He divided himself up like the loaves in the Gospel, commanded the battle by day, planned it by night; going and coming, for the sentinels saw him—­never eating, never sleeping.  So, seeing these prodigies, the soldiers adopted him for their father.  Forward, march!  Then those others, the rulers in Paris, seeing this, said to themselves:  ’Here’s a bold one that seems to get his orders from the skies; he’s likely to put his paw on France.  We must let him loose on Asia; we will send him to America, perhaps that will satisfy him.’  But ’t was written above for him, as it was for Jesus