He continued his journey on foot; and when near the charnel-house of Morat, which had not yet been destroyed by Brune, this other Bold soldier, who himself was to have his mortuary at Waterloo, asked: "Where is the Duke of Burgundy's battlefield?"
"There, General," said a Swiss officer, pointing out what he wished to see.
"How many men had he?"
"Sixty thousand, sire."
"How was he attacked?"
"By the Swiss rushing down the neighbouring mountains, and, under cover of a wood which then existed, turning the Burgundian position."
"What!" he exclaimed. "Charles the Bold had sixty thousand men and yet he did not take possession of the mountains!" And the conqueror of Italy shrugged his shoulders.
"Frenchmen of to-day fight better than that," Lannes observed.
"The Burgundians were not French in those days," Bonaparte answered shortly; and, as his carriage was now brought up, repaired, he got in and rapidly drove away.
Bonaparte was not altogether easy in the position he had made for himself by this sequence of marvellous conquests. He had indeed received a triumphant ovation in Paris; the whole audience had risen, shouting, "Vive Bonaparte!" when they heard that he was present at the second representation of Horatius Codes; but all these ovations did not blind his eyes to facts.