Bonaparte appeared at the height of glory, and yet he was not contented. In vain the multitude worshipped him with something like idolatry: nothing could satiate his ambition. The Moniteur was filled with praise of him in prose and verse.

There was this distich by Lebrun, surnamed the French Pindar:

Hero, dear to Peace, the Arts, and Victory,
In two years he wins a thousand centuries of glory!

and this impromptu of an old man, Citizen Palissot, who in his own fashion thus reproduced the denunciation of Simeon:

Over tyrants armed against us
I have seen my country triumph.
I have seen the hero of Italy
He chained to his knees
With a triple knot of brass Discord and Envy.

Fate, I scorn thy shears;
After so glorious a sight
What does life still offer me?"

No sovereign in his own capital has ever produced a greater impression than the hero of Arcole. His modest dwelling in the rue Chantereine was more famous than mighty palaces. One evening when he was going home he was surprised by finding workmen changing the sign bearing the name of the street, which henceforth was called rue de la Victoire.

At the theatre it was in vain that he hid himself at the back of the box; he was, in spite of himself, the object of enthusiastic demonstrations. One morning he sent his secretary, Bourrienne, to a theatre manager to ask him to give that evening two very popular pieces, if such a thing were possible. The manager replied, "Nothing is impossible for General Bonaparte; he has struck that word out of the dictionary."

When he was elected a member of the Institute, December 26, 1797, he produced perhaps a greater effect in his coat embroidered with green palm leaves than in his general's uniform.

The day of his reception at the palace of the Louvre, where the meetings of the Institute were held at that time, the public had eyes only for this wonderful young man. Chenier happened to read that day a poem in commemoration of Hoche; but the hero of the occasion was not Hoche, but Bonaparte, and the passage which provoked the heartiest applause was one in which the poet spoke of a projected invasion of England. The whole company burst into cheers, and that evening Bonaparte received, among other visits, that of Madame Tallien, who came to congratulate him on his new triumph.

Josephine greatly enjoyed her husband's glory, and nothing troubled her happiness. Her son Eugene had returned from Italy; her daughter Hortense, who was a pupil in Madame Campan's boarding-school at Saint Germain, seemed to share her brother's amiable and brilliant qualities.

In the month of March, 1798, this charming girl, whom Bonaparte loved as his own child, acted before him, at her school, in Esther, recalling thus the performances at Saint Cyr under Louis XIV.

Josephine had never been happier; her brothers-in-law, in spite of their dislike of her, had not been able to make any trouble between her and her husband, who then had neither time nor cause for jealousy. She was very fond of society, and liked to see her little house in the rue de la Victoire crowded with all the principal people of Paris. She used to give literary dinners there, when her husband's sparkling, profound, and original conversation amazed such students as Monge, Berthollet, Laplace; such writers as Ducis, Legouve, Lemercier, Bernardin de Saint Pierre; such artists as David and Mehul.

The Moniteur was untiring in its praise of the universal genius of this young general, who called forth the admiration of his colleagues of the Institute, who talked of mathematics with Lagrange; of poetry, with Chenier; of law, with Daunou; and of all, well. But Josephine's love, the circle of courtiers who surrounded him, his universal success, the perpetual gratifications of his pride which fortune showered upon him, were all incapable of satisfying his ardent, restless spirit, which imperatively demanded great emotions, great risks, great dangers.

Restless, and yearning for action, he uneasily waited for the moment to come when the public should grow tired of his glory as of everything else. "No one remembers anything at Paris," he said to Bourrienne. "If I stay long without doing anything, I am lost. One fame succeeds another in this great Babylon; no one will look at me if I go three times to the theatre, so I go very seldom."

The administration of the Opera offered him a special performance, but he declined it. When Bourrienne suggested that it would be a pleasant thing for him to receive the applause of his fellow-citizens, "Bah!" he replied, "the people would crowd about me just as eagerly if I were going to the scaffold."

"This Paris weighs on me," he said on another occasion, "like a coat of lead."

In this city which swallows so many reputations, and where everything so soon grows old, he remembered Caesar, who would have preferred being first in a village to being second in Rome. Doubtless there was in all France no name so famous as his, but officially, the Directors were above him; they were, in fact, the heads of the government of which he was but a subordinate. By a simple official communication they could have deprived him of his command.

The Duke of Ragusa has justly remarked: "If Bonaparte, who was destined to have an easy success the 18th Brumaire, had, early in 1798, made the slightest attempt against the Directory, nine-tenths of the citizens would have turned their back upon him."

Madame de Stael tells the story that one evening he was talking to Barras of his ascendancy over the Italians, who wanted to make him Duke of Milan and King of Italy.

"But," he added, "I contemplate nothing of the sort in any country."

"You do well not to think of such a thing in France," replied Barras; "for if the Directory were to send you to the Temple to-morrow, there would not be four persons to object to it."

Bonaparte felt in his heart that Barras spoke the truth. A capital like Paris seemed to him odious unless he were its master. To have to depend on the Directors, the Councils, the ministers, the newspapers, was an intolerable weariness. For two years he had been without superior control; he had acted like an absolute monarch, and he felt out of his element in a city where the reins of government were not in his hands.

At the end of January, 1798, he said: "Bourrienne, I don't want to stay here; there is nothing to do. They won't listen to anything. I see very well that if I stay, it will be all up with me very soon. Everything wears out here; my glory is all gone; this little Europe can't supply any. I must go to the East; that's where all great reputations are made. But first I want to visit the ports, to see for myself what can be undertaken. I will take you, and Lannes, and Sulkowski. If, as I fear, an invasion of England seems doubtful, the Army of England will become the Army of the East, and I shall go to Egypt."

Bonaparte's visit to the northern ports, which he began February 10, 1798, was of only a week's duration. He returned to Paris through Antwerp, Brussels, Lille, and Saint Quentin.

"Well, General," asked Bourrienne, "what's the result of your trip? Are you satisfied? For my part, I must confess that I didn't find any great resources or grand hopes in what I saw and heard."

Bonaparte replied: "The risk is too great; I shan't venture it. I don't want to trifle with the fate of France."

From that moment the expedition to Egypt was determined. The year before, at Passeriano, Bonaparte bad said: "Europe is a mole-hill; you find great empires and great revolutions only in the East, where there are six hundred millions of men."

To grow greater by remoteness; to win triumphs in the land of light, of the country of the founders of religions and of empires; to use the Pyramids as the pedestals of his glory; to attain strange, colossal, fabulous results; to make the Mediterranean a French lake; to traverse Africa and Asia; to wrest East India from England, such were the vast dreams of this man who, with more reason than Fouquet, for Fouquet had only money, and he had glory, was tempted to exclaim, in a moment of rapture: "Quo non ascendam?" "Whither shall I not rise?"

The aim of the expedition he proposed to undertake was unknown, yet every one wanted to accompany him. No one knew where he was going, but he was followed blindly, for faith was felt in his star. Strangely enough, Bonaparte did not give any indications, even to his principal generals, of the point of destination.

The Moniteur, in its issue of March 31, having had the imprudence to mention Egypt, the Directory nullified the effect of the blunder by publishing an order commanding General Bonaparte to go to Brest to take command of the Army of England.

Military men were not alone in asking to take part in this expedition: civilians, scholars, engineers, artists, also wished to go along. Bonaparte always regretted that he had not been able to take with him Ducis, the poet, Mehul, the composer, and Lays, the singer. But Ducis was too old to endure the hardships of a campaign, Mehul was bound to the Conservatory, and Lays to the Opera.

"I am sorry that he won't go with us," said the general to Arnault, speaking of this singer; "he would have been our Ossian. We need one; we need a bard, who might, when the occasion arose, sing at the head of our columns. His voice would have had such a good effect on the soldiers. No one would suit me better than he."

Bonaparte wished to transfer the civilization of Paris to the shores of the Nile. From the savants he chose Monge, Berthollet, Denon, Dolomieu; from the authors, Arnault and Parceval; from the artists, Rigel, the pianist, and Villeteau, the singer, who took Lays' parts at the Opera.

Bourrienne, who was in the secret of the expedition, asked the general how long he meant to stay in Egypt.

"A little while, or six years," answered Bonaparte; "everything depends on circumstances I shall colonize the country; bring over artists, all sorts of workmen, women, and actors. We are only twenty-nine; we shall be thirty-five: that's not old these six years will see me, if all goes well, in India. Tell every one who speaks of our departure, that you are going to Brest. Say the same thing to your family."

Bonaparte was eager for action. He missed the smell of powder. All the time he was in Paris, between the Italian campaign and the Egyptian expedition, he continually wore his spurs, although he did not wear his uniform. Night and day, he kept a horse in his stable, saddled and bridled.

One moment, the Egyptian plan was nearly abandoned, because war with Austria seemed imminent; but the complications soon vanished, and the preparations were resumed with vigor. There were many who regretted Bonaparte's departure, and said that his real place was in France.

"The Directory wishes to get you away," the poet Arnault told him; "France wishes to keep you. The Parisians blame your resignation; they are crying out more bitterly than ever against the government. Aren't you afraid they will at last cry out after you?"

"The Parisians cry, but they will never do anything; they are discontented, but they are not unhappy. If I got on horseback, no one would follow me; the time hasn't come. We shall leave to-morrow."