“What I should have done,” repeated Bonaparte, and, like Ajax, he seemed to threaten Heaven with his clinched fist; “if I had taken Saint-Jean-d’Acre, I should have found the treasures of the pasha in the city and three thousand stands of arms. With that I should have raised and armed all Syria, so maddened by the ferocity of Djezzar that each time I attacked him the population prayed to God for his overthrow. I should have marched upon Damascus and Aleppo; I should have swelled my army with the malcontents. Advancing into the country, I should, step by step, have proclaimed the abolition of slavery, and the annihilation of the tyrannical government of the pashas. I should have overthrown the Turkish empire, and founded a great empire at Constantinople, which would have fixed my place in history higher than Constantine and Mohammed II. Perhaps I should have returned to Paris by way of Adrianople and Vienna, after annihilating the house of Austria. Well, my dear general, that is the project which that little hovel of a Saint-Jean-d’Acre rendered abortive!” And he so far forgot to whom he was speaking, as he followed the shadows of his vanished dream, that he called Bernadotte “my dear general.” The latter, almost appalled by the magnitude of the project which Bonaparte had unfolded to him, made a step backward. “Yes,” said Bernadotte, “I perceive what you want, for you have just betrayed yourself. Orient or Occident, a throne! A throne? So be it; why not? Count upon me to help you conquer it, but elsewhere than in France. I am a Republican, and I will die a Republican.” Bonaparte shook his head as if to disperse the thoughts which held him in the clouds. “I, too, am a Republican,” said he, “but see what has come of your Republic!” “What matter!” cried Bernadotte. “It is not to a word or a form that I am faithful, but to the principle. Let the Directors but yield me the power, and I would know how to defend the Republic against her internal enemies, even as I defended her from her foreign enemies.” As he said these words, Bernadotte raised his eyes, and his glance encountered that of Bonaparte. Two naked blades clashing together never sent forth lightning more vivid, more terrible. Josephine had watched the two men for some time past with anxious attention. She saw the dual glance teeming with reciprocal menace. She rose hastily and went to Bernadotte. “General,” said she. Bernadotte bowed. “You are intimate with Gohier, are you not?” she continued. “He is one of my best friends, madame,” said Bernadotte. “Well, we dine with him the day after to-morrow, the 18th Brumaire; dine there yourself and bring Madame Bernadotte. I should be so glad to know her better.” “Madame,” said Bernadotte, “in the days of the Greeks you would have been one of the three graces; in the Middle Ages you would have been a fairy; to-day you are the most adorable woman I know.”