was not yet the right one, he flatly refused the place in
the Directory which was offered to him.

It was as a substitute for this dangerous visionary that Carnot was
made a director. He was now in his forty-third year, and at the height
of his powers. In him was embodied all that was moderate and sound,
consequently all that was enduring, in the French Revolution; he was a
thorough scholar, and his treatise on the metaphysics of the calculus
forms an important chapter in the history of mathematical physics. As
an officer in the engineers he had attained the highest distinction,
while as minister of war he had shown himself an organizer and
strategist of the first order. But his highest aim was to be a model
French citizen. In his family relations as son, husband, and father,
he was held by his neighbors to be a pattern; in his public life he
strove with equal sincerity of purpose to illustrate the highest
ideals of the eighteenth century. Such was the ardor of his
republicanism that no man nor party in France was so repugnant but
that he would use either one or both, if necessary, for his country's
welfare, although he was like Chatham in his lofty scorn for parties.
To him as a patriot, therefore, France, as against the outer world,
was first, no matter what her government might be; but the France he
yearned for was a land regenerated by the gospel of humanity, awakened
to the highest activity by the equality of all before the law, refined
by that self-abnegation of every man which makes all men brothers, and
destroys the menace of the law.

And yet he was no dreamer. While a member of the National Assembly he
had displayed such practical common sense in his chosen field of
military science, that in 1793 the Committee of Safety intrusted to
him the control of the war. The standard of rank and command was no
longer birth nor seniority nor influence, but merit. The wild and
ignorant hordes of men which the conscription law had brought into the
field were something hitherto unknown in Europe. It was Carnot who
organized, clothed, fed, and drilled them. It was he who devised the
new tactics and evolved the new and comprehensive plans which made his
national armies the power they became. It was in Carnot's
administration that the young generals first came to the fore. It was
by his favor that almost every man of that galaxy of modern warriors
who so long dazzled Europe by their feats of arms first appeared as a
candidat