"Mont Cenis; Mont St. Bernard; the obstinate struggle before Mantua on the 27 Nivôse, year VII, where two horses were killed under me; the crossing of the Weiss, which was laid to the credit of Generals Baraguay-d'Hilliers and Delmas, but was really due to me; the act of Horatius Codes performed afresh in the Tyrol, which won me the honour of being introduced to the Executive Directory under that name by General Bonaparte, who thought of appointing me, at that time, commander-in-chief of the Army of the Tyrol; finally, the insurrection at Cairo, which I quelled in the absence of all; you are well aware, Citizen Minister, those are my inalienable claims in the eyes of my old comrades-in-arms, and deserving of the recognition of my country. "From 1793, Citizen Minister, I was commander-in-chief of the Republican armies, and throughout these unfortunate and difficult times I was never beaten; on the contrary, my enterprises were invariably crowned with success. "I am now the oldest general in my rank; I was the companion of the Consul-General in nearly all his Italian and Egyptian wars, and no one contributed more to his triumphs and to the glory of our arms than did I; his letters, which I have in my possession, testify no less to the respect in which he held me than to his friendship. You yourself lavished tokens of lively interest on me when I returned from the Neapolitan prisons, and now I am to be put aside on half pay! "Citizen Minister, I cannot endure such an indignity; I beg you, therefore, to show this letter to the First Consul, and to tell him that I trust in his old friendship to obtain for me a place on the active list. "Honour has always directed my conduct; sincerity and loyalty are the bases of my character; and injustice is the cruellest torture to me." I have before me the register of all my father's correspondence; it stops short at this letter, and the rest of the pages are blank. These two letters to the minister of war and to the First Consul were the last he wrote. Doubtless they were never answered. Despair beset him after this; he buried himself in the shadow of his enforced inactivity as those condemned to death await their doom in their cells before being taken to the scaffold: in a state of torpor, varied by fits of despair, he awaited that last supreme moment; most of his comrades-in-arms, more fortunate than he, had met it on the field of battle. CHAPTER VIII Letter from my father to General Brune on my birth--The postscript--My godfather and godmother--First recollections of infancy--Topography of the château des Fossés and sketches of some of its inhabitants--The snake and the frog--Why I asked Pierre if he could swim--Continuation of _Jocrisse._ As I mentioned at the beginning of these Memoirs, I was born on the 5th Thermidor, year X (24th of July 1802), at 4.30 a.m.