"When shall I arise from this estate? When will the crown of the
future be linked with these pleasant recollections of the past?"
These were the questions which the growing boy repeated to himself
every morning and every evening. But his lips never uttered them; he
never gave the slightest indication that he was any thing else than
the nephew of General Kleber. The French garrison of Mayence
considered him to be so and no one thought of asking whether he bore
any other name. It sufficed that he was the nephew of the noble,
valiant, and heroic General Kleber. That was the name and rank of
the little prince.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE BARON DE EICHEMONT.
Thus passed weeks, months, and even years, and on the gloomy horizon
of France arose a new constellation, and from the blood-spotted,
corpse-strewn soil of the French republic sprang an armed warrior--a
solitary one!--but one to whom millions were soon to bow, and who,
like the divinity of battles, was to control the destinies of
nations and of princes. This one solitary man was General Bonaparte,
the same young man who in the first bloody days of the French
Revolution beheld the storm at the Tuileries, and expressed his
regret to his companion--the actor Talma--that the king did not
command his soldiers to mow down the canaille with grape-shot.
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