"To save the life of two men, and to make sixty thousand perish, as Phocion, of whom you spoke just now, did in the forty-five battles which he fought, do you think that would be sufficient compensation?"
"Upon my word, yes, when those two men were Alcibiades and Xenophon."
"I am not as ambitious as you," said Charles, with a sigh. "You want to be an Alexander, a Scipio, or a Cæsar, while I should be content to be, I don't say, a Virgil—there never will be but one Virgil—but a Horace, a Longinus, or even an Apuleius. You want a camp, an army, tents, horses, bright uniforms, drums, bugles, trumpets, military music, the cracking of rifles, the thunder of cannon; for me the aurea mediocritas of the poet is enough—a little house full of friends, a great library full of books, a life work and dreams, the death of the righteous in the end, and God will have given me more than I dare to ask. Ah! if I only knew Greek!"
"But what are you going to Pichegru for except to become his aide-de-camp some day."
"No, to be his secretary now; there, my bag is strapped."
"And my trunk is packed."
Eugene went into Charles's room.
"Ah!" said he, "you are fortunate to be able to limit your desires; you have at least some prospect of arriving at your goal, while I—"
"Do you think then that my ambition is not as great as yours, my dear Eugene, and that it is less difficult to become a Diderot than a Maréchal de Saxe, a Voltaire than a Turenne? To be sure, I do not aspire to be either a Diderot or a Voltaire."