he lent himself equally to all—­as fitted for action as for thought, he passed from one to the other with facility, according to the phases of his destiny.  There was in him the flexibility of the Greek mind in the stirring periods of the democracy in Athens.  His deep study early directed his mind to history, that poem of men of action.  Plutarch nourished him with his manly diet.  He moulded on the antique figures drawn from life by the historian the ideal of his own life, only all the parts of every great man suited him alike:  he assumed them by turns, realised them in his reveries, as suited to reproduce In him the voluptuary as the sage, the malcontent as the patriot; Aristippus as Themistocles; Scipio as Coriolanus.  He mingled with his studies the exercises of a military life, formed his body to fatigue, at the same time that he fashioned his mind to lofty ideas; equally skilled in handling a sword and daring in subduing a horse.

Demosthenes, by patience, formed a sonorous voice from a stammering tongue.  Dumouriez, with a weak and ailing constitution in his childhood, enured his body for war.  The stirring ambition of his soul required that the frame which encased it should be of endurance.

III.

Opposing the desires of his father, who destined him for the war office, the pen was his abhorrence, and he obtained a sub-lieutenancy in the cavalry.  As aide-de-camp of marshal d’Armentieres, he made the campaign of Hanover.  In a retreat he seized the standard from the hands of a fugitive, rallied two hundred troopers round him, saved a battery of five pieces of cannon, and covered the passage of the army.  Remaining almost alone in the rear, he made himself a rampart of his dead horse, and wounded three of the enemy’s hussars.  Wounded in many places by gun-shot and sabre wounds—­his thigh entangled beneath a fallen horse—­two fingers of his right hand severed—­his forehead cut open—­his eyes literally singed by a discharge of powder, he still fought, and only surrendered prisoner to the Baron de Beker, who saved his life, and conveyed him to the camp of the English.

His youth and good constitution restored him to health at the end of two months.  Destined to form himself to victory by the example of defeats, and want of experience in our generals, he rejoined marshal de Soubise and marshal de Broglie; and was present at the routs which the French owe to their enmity and rivalry.

At the peace he went to rejoin his regiment in garrison at Saint Lo.  Passing by Pont Audemer, he stopped at the house of his father’s sister.  A passionate love for one of his uncle’s daughters kept him there.  This love, shared by his cousin, and favoured by his aunt, was opposed by his father.  The young girl, in despair, took refuge in a convent.  Dumouriez swore to take her thence, and went away.  On his road, overcome by his grief, he bought some opium at Dieppe, shut himself up in his apartment, wrote his adieus to his beloved, a letter of reproaches to his father, and took the poison.  Nature saved him, and repentance ensued—­he went, and, throwing himself at his father’s feet, they were reconciled.