about to settle
German affairs at the Congress of Rastadt; to the third he therefore
turned the whole force of his genius.

The conquest of Egypt and the restoration to France of her supremacy
in India appealed to both sides of Bonaparte's nature. The vision of
the tricolour floating above the minarets of Cairo and the palace of
the Great Mogul at Delhi fascinated a mind in which the mysticism of
the south was curiously blent with the practicality and passion for
details that characterize the northern races. To very few men in the
world's history has it been granted to dream grandiose dreams and all
but realize them, to use by turns the telescope and the microscope of
political survey, to plan vast combinations of force, and yet to
supervise with infinite care the adjustment of every adjunct. Caesar,
in the old world, was possibly the mental peer of Bonaparte in this
majestic equipoise of the imaginative and practical qualities; but of
Caesar we know comparatively little; whereas the complex workings of
the greatest mind of the modern world stand revealed in that
storehouse of facts and fancies, the "Correspondance de Napoleon." The
motives which led to the Eastern Expedition are there unfolded. In the
letter which he wrote to Talleyrand shortly before the signature of
the peace of Campo Formio occurs this suggestive passage:

"The character of our nation is to be far too vivacious amidst
prosperity. If we take for the basis of all our operations true
policy, which is nothing else than the calculation of combinations
and chances, we shall long be _la grande nation_ and the arbiter of
Europe. I say more: we hold the balance of Europe: we will make
that balance incline as we wish; and, if such is the order of fate,
I think it by no means impossible that we may in a few years attain
those grand results of which the heated and enthusiastic
imagination catches a glimpse, and which the extremely cool,
persistent, and calculating man will alone attain."

This letter was written when Bonaparte was bartering away Venice to
the Emperor in consideration of the acquisition by France of the
Ionian Isles. Its reference to the vivacity of the French was
doubtless evoked by the orders which he then received to
"revolutionize Italy." To do that, while the Directory further
extorted from England Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, and her eastern
conquests, was a programme dictated by exc