The seaman continued to pull
with his left hand, but he pointed with his right over the
slate-coloured dancing waters.
'There's Boney himself,' said he.
You who live in a quieter age cannot conceive the thrill which these
simple words sent through me. It was but ten years since we had first
heard of this man with the curious Italian name--think of it, ten
years, the time that it takes for a private to become a non-commissioned
officer, or a clerk to win a fifty-pound advance in his salary. He had
sprung in an instant out of nothing into everything. One month people
were asking who he was, the next he had broken out in the north of Italy
like the plague; Venice and Genoa withered at the touch of this swarthy
ill-nourished boy. He cowed the soldiers in the field, and he outwitted
the statesmen in the council chamber. With a frenzy of energy he rushed
to the east, and then, while men were still marvelling at the way in
which he had converted Egypt into a French department, he was back again
in Italy and had beaten Austria for the second time to the earth.
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