Fortuné barked at everything, and used to bite other dogs. The cook's dog, a mastiff, returned the bite one day, and killed Fortuné. Josephine was in despair; but the mischief was done, and there was no help for it. Nov. 17 Napoleon left Milan, and, after a continued ovation along the route, reached Paris Dec. 5, where, a change having taken place in the government, he thought it wise to be for a time. Though the Directory was jealous of the rising power of Napoleon, the people demanded a magnificent reception for him, which was prepared in the Luxembourg. Napoleon made an address which was eagerly listened to, and the people were wild with enthusiasm. Thiers says, "All heads were overcome with the intoxication." Talleyrand gave a great ball costing over twelve thousand francs. Bourrienne, his secretary, remarked that it must be agreeable to "see his fellow-citizens so eagerly running after him." "Bah! the people would crowd as fast to see me if I were going to the scaffold," was Napoleon's reply. So well did he understand human nature. He said to Bourrienne, "Were I to remain in Paris long, doing nothing, I should be lost. In this great Babylon one reputation displaces another. Let me be seen but three times at the theatre and I shall no longer excite attention; so I shall go there but seldom." Napoleon was made a member of the Institute, in the class of the Sciences and Arts. This honor he greatly valued, writing to the president of the class, "I feel well assured that, before I can be their equal, I must long be their scholar.... True conquests--the only ones which leave no regret behind them--are those which are made over ignorance. The most honorable, as well as the most useful, occupation for nations is the contributing to the extension of human knowledge." "He had," says Bourrienne, "an extreme aversion to mediocrity," or to people who are too indolent to read and improve themselves. "Mankind," he said, "are, in the end, always governed by superiority of intellectual qualities." The Directory were anxious for an attack upon England, which had joined the Coalition against France in 1793, and was her most formidable enemy. "Go there," said Barras, "and capture the giant Corsair that infests the seas; go punish in London outrages that have too long gone unpunished." Arnault said to Napoleon, "The Directory wishes to get you away; France wishes to keep you." "I am perfectly willing to make a tour of the coast," said Napoleon to Bourrienne. "Should the expedition to Britain prove too hazardous, as I much fear that it will, the army of England will become the army of the East, and we will go to Egypt." He spent a week in looking over the ground, and said, "I will not hazard it. I would not thus sport with the fate of France."