[Footnote 63: Carnot thoroughly understood and appreciated the genius shown in Buonaparte's plan for an Italian campaign, and converted the Directorate to his opinion. They sent a copy to Schérer, then in command at Nice, and he returned it in a temper, declaring that the man who made such a plan had better come and work it. The Directory took him at his word.] There was one weird omen which, read aright, distinguishes the otherwise commonplace occurrence. In the wedding-ring were two words--"To destiny." The words were ominous, for they were indicative of a policy long since formed and never afterward concealed, being a pretense to deceive Josephine as well as the rest of the world: the giver was about to assume a new rôle,--that of the "man of destiny,"--to work for a time on the imagination and superstition of his age. Sometimes he forgot his part, and displayed the shrewd, calculating, hard-working man behind the mask, who was less a fatalist than a personified fate, less a child of fortune than its maker. "Great events," he wrote a very short time later from Italy, "ever depend but upon a single hair. The adroit man profits by everything, neglects nothing which can increase his chances; the less adroit, by sometimes disregarding a single chance, fails in everything." Here is the whole philosophy of Bonaparte's life. He may have been sincere at times in the other profession; if so, it was because he could find no other expression for what in his nature corresponded to romance in others.