Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/57

Rh tors are squabbling among themselves like horses left in the stable without any oats, and are letting the government go all to pieces, they leave their armies unsupported. We are utterly ruined in Italy. Yes, my friends, we have evacuated Mantua on the top of the disasters at la Trebbia, and Joubert has just lost the battle of Novi. I only hope Masséna will guard the Swiss passes, for Suwarroff is overrunning the country. We are beaten along the Rhine. Moreau has been sent out there by the Directory. He is a fine fellow, but is he going to keep the frontier? I wish he may, I am sure; but the coalition will crush us altogether at last, and unluckily the one general who could save us has gone to the devil down there in Egypt! And how is he to get back moreover? England is mistress of the seas."

"Bonaparte's absence does not trouble me, commandant," said Gérard, his young adjutant, whose superior faculties had been developed by a careful education. "Is our Revolution to end like that ? We are bound to do more than merely defend the soil of France; ours is a double mission. Ought we not to keep alive the very soul of our country, the generous principles of liberty and independence, that human reason evoked by our Assemblies, which is winning its way, I hope, little by little? France is like a traveler with a light in her keeping; she must carry it in one hand and defend herself with the other; if your news is well founded, for these ten years past we have never been surrounded by so many who would seek to blow it out. Our doctrines and our country, all alike are about to perish."

"Alas, yes!" sighed the commandant Hulot. "Those mountebanks of Directors have managed to quarrel with all the men who could have steered the vessel—Bernadotte, Carnot, and every one else down to citizen Talleyrand has abandoned us. There is only one good patriot left in fact, our friend Fouché, who has everything in his hands by police supervision. There is a man for you! He it was, too, who gave me warning in time of this insurrection. For all that, here we are in some pitfall or other, I am positive."