[Footnote 1: The painter Lethiers painted a picture of my father, representing this scene.] [Footnote 2: Bonaparte's headquarters and rendezvous.] [Footnote 3: A Belgian officer.] CHAPTER II Joubert's loyalty towards my father--"Send me Dumas"--The Horatius Codes of the Tyrol--My father is appointed-Governor of the Trévisan--The agent of the Directory--My father fêted at his departure--The treaty of Campo-Formio--The return to Paris--The flag of the Army of Italy--The charnel-house of Morat--Charles the Bold--Bonaparte is elected a member of the Institute--First thoughts of the expedition to Egypt--Toulon--Bonaparte and Joséphine--What was going to happen in Egypt. Joubert owed a large share of the success of that fine Tyrolean campaign to my father, and, being a loyal man, he did for his comrade-in-arms what under similar circumstances his comrade-in-arms would have done for him. Each report he sent in to Bonaparte contained my father's name coupled with the highest of praise. To have heard Joubert, one might have thought the whole success of the campaign was owing to my father's energy and courage. My father was the terror of the Austrian cavalry--he was a mediæval Bayard, and if, added Joubert, by one of those miracles which govern the march of the centuries, Italy had produced two Cæsars, General Dumas would have been one of them. Very different was Berthier's treatment of him--Berthier, who had stigmatised my father as a "looker-on" during a campaign in which three horses were killed under him. By degrees, as these things were brought to the notice of the general-in-chief, Bonaparte came round to my father's side, and when Joubert was leaving the camp of Grätz, where he had been paying the commander-in-chief a visit, Bonaparte spoke these few most pregnant words: "By the way, send Dumas to me." Joubert hastened to deliver his commission directly he returned to his army. But my father was sulky, and it took all Joubert's friendly entreaties to persuade him to accede to Bonaparte's invitation. However, he started for Grätz, but with a fixed determination to send in his resignation to the Directory, if Bonaparte did not give him the reception he deserved. My father was a Creole--with the Creole characteristics, nonchalant, impetuous, changeable. He had no sooner won his heart's desires than he conceived a profound disgust for them. When the energy he had expended in obtaining his desires had died down he fell back into his usual indifference and laziness, and at the first sign of opposition he would talk of the pleasures of country life, as did the ancient poet whose country he had conquered, and would send in his resignation to the Directory. Happily Dermoncourt was at hand. When he received these letters of resignation to despatch, he slipped them in a drawer of his desk, put the key in his pocket, and quietly waited.