heed it. I pay attention only to what rude peasants say.'"
"His estimates," says Taine, "of certain situations are masterpieces of picturesque conciseness."
"'Why did I stop and sign the preliminaries of Leoben? Because I was playing Vingt-et-un and was satisfied with twenty.' His insight into character is that of the most sagacious critic. 'The "Mahomet" of Voltaire is neither a prophet nor an Arab, only an impostor graduated out of the École Polytechnique.' 'Madame de Genlis tries to define virtue as if she were the discoverer of it.' (Of Madame de Staël), 'This woman teaches people to think who never took to it or have forgotten how.' (Of Châteaubriand, one of whose relations had just been shot), 'He will write a few pathetic pages and read them aloud in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; pretty women will shed tears, and that will console him.' (Of the Abbé Delille), 'He is wit in its dotage.' (Of Pasquier and Molé), 'I make the most of one, and made the other.'"
It is partly this power of grasping the thoughts and intentions of others which helps to make him such a general. Again and again the point must be insisted upon—that his victories were not happy accidents, but the final link in a long chain of reflection, work, knowledge, and preparation. All this is summed up in a picturesque phrase by Napoleon himself:—
