n, in view of so great a force
assembling, was natural: "Egypt, I have no doubt is the favourite and
ultimate object of the Corsican tyrant." Nelson's spirit rises with
the occasion. "I shall try to intercept them, but I cannot go so far
to the westward as is necessary; for I will not lose sight of the
Toulon fleet. What a most zealous man can do to meet all points of
difficulty, shall be done. My squadron is the finest for its numbers
in the world, and much may be expected of it. Should superior numbers
join, we must look it in the face. _Nil desperandum!_ God is good, and
our cause is just."

This alarm passed away like others. Bonaparte had no idea of pushing
ships into the Mediterranean, or embarking his naval forces on any
doubtful experiments, until he had first tested the possibility of
that supreme adventure, the invasion of England. When that mighty
imagination passed away like a dream that leaves no trace, he ordered
his fleets into the Mediterranean, as Nelson had expected, and the
result was Trafalgar.

As the spring of 1804 opened, the French admiral at Toulon began to
exercise his ships outside the harbor, singly or in small groups, like
half-fledged birds learning to fly; or, to use Nelson's expression,
"My friend Monsieur La Touche sometimes plays bo-peep in and out of
Toulon, like a mouse at the edge of her hole." The only drill-ground
for fleets, the open sea, being closed to him, he could do no better
than these furtive excursions, to prepare for the eagle's flight
Napoleon had prescribed to him. "Last week, at different times, two
sail of the line put their heads out of Toulon, and on Thursday, the
5th [April], in the afternoon, they all came out." "Yesterday [the
9th] a rear-admiral and seven sail, including frigates, put their nose
outside the harbour. If they go on playing this game, some day we
shall lay salt upon their tails, and so end the campaign."

These outings--"capers," Nelson called them--naturally became more
venturesome by little and little, as the British suffered them to
proceed without serious attempt at molestation, or near approach on
their part. Nelson veiled the keenness of his watch, as he crouched
for a spring, with a drowsy appearance of caution and indifference.
The French admiral, Latouche Treville, was he who had commanded at
Boulogne when Nelson's boats were repelled with slaughter; and it was
also he who in 1792 had sent a grenadier to the King of Naples, with a
pere