The advice was useless. The Venetian democrats determined on a last desperate venture. They secretly sent three deputies, among them Dandolo, with a large sum of money wherewith to bribe the Directors to reject the treaty of Campo Formio. This would have been quite practicable, had not their errand become known to Bonaparte. Alarmed and enraged at this device, which, if successful, would have consigned him to infamy, he sent Duroc in chase; and the envoys, caught before they crossed the Maritime Alps, were brought before the general at Milan. To his vehement reproaches and threats they opposed a dignified silence, until Dandolo, appealing to his generosity, awakened those nobler feelings which were never long dormant. Then he quietly dismissed them--to witness the downfall of their beloved city. _Acribus initiis, ut ferme talia, incuriosa fine_; these cynical words, with which the historian of the Roman Empire blasted the movements of his age, may almost serve as the epitaph to Bonaparte's early enthusiasms. Proclaiming at the beginning of his Italian campaigns that he came to free Italy, he yet finished his course of almost unbroken triumphs by a surrender which his panegyrists have scarcely attempted to condone. But the fate of Venice was almost forgotten amidst the jubilant acclaim which greeted the conqueror of Italy on his arrival at Paris. All France rang with the praises of the hero who had spread liberty throughout Northern and Central Italy, had enriched the museums of Paris with priceless masterpieces of art, whose army had captured 150,000 prisoners, and had triumphed in 18 pitched battles--for Caldiero was now reckoned as a French victory--and 47 smaller engagements. The Directors, shrouding their hatred and fear of the masterful proconsul under their Roman togas, greeted him with uneasy effusiveness. The climax of the official comedy was reached when, at the reception of the conqueror, Barras, pointing northwards, exclaimed: "Go there and capture the giant corsair that infests the seas: go punish in London outrages that have too long been unpunished": whereupon, as if overcome by his emotions, he embraced the general. Amidst similar attentions bestowed by the other Directors, the curtain falls on the first, or Italian, act of the young hero's career, soon to rise on oriental adventures that were to recall the exploits of Alexander. * * * * * CHAPTER VIII EGYPT