The Danube! One more famous river crossed by me unknowingly, even as I had descended into the bed of the oleanders of the Eurotas without knowing it! What has it availed me to drink of the waters of the Mississippi, the Eridanus, the Tiber, the Cephissus, the Hermus, the Jordan, the Nile, the Guadalquivir, the Tagus, the Ebro, the Rhine, the Spree, the Seine and a hundred other obscure or celebrated rivers? Unknown, they have not given me their peace; illustrious, they have not communicated to me their glory: they will be able to say only that they have seen me pass as their banks see their waves pass. [Sidenote: Ulm.] I arrived at Ulm fairly early on Sunday the 19th of May, after travelling through the scene of the battles of Moreau and Bonaparte. Hyacinthe, who is a member of the Legion of Honour, was wearing the ribbon: this decoration obtained for us an incredible amount of consideration. I, wearing in my button-hole only a little flower, according to my custom, passed, until they heard my name, for a mysterious being: my Mamelukes at Cairo used to insist, whether I would or no, that I was a general of Napoleon disguised as a literary man; they would not give in and every quarter of an hour expected to see me put away Egypt in the sash of my caftan. And yet it is among nations whose villages we have burnt and whose harvests we have laid waste that those sentiments exist. I rejoiced in this glory; but, if we had done nothing but good to Germany, should we be as greatly regretted there? O inexplicable human nature! The evils of war are forgotten; we have left on the soil of our conquests the spark of life. That inert mass set in movement continues to ferment because its intelligence is commencing. When travelling nowadays, we see the nations watching, knapsack on back: ready to start, they seem to be waiting for us in order to place us at the head of the column. A Frenchman is always taken for the aide-de-camp who brings the order to march. Ulm is a clean little town, with no particular character; its dismantled ramparts have been converted into kitchen-gardens or walks, which happens to all ramparts. Their fortune has something in common with that of the military: the soldier bears arms in his youth; when invalided, he becomes a gardener.