"Because battles are not won with a map, a pair of compasses, and red, blue or green-headed pins. It needs instinct, an unerring glance, genius. I should like to know if Hannibal had plans of the battles of Trebbia, of Lake Trassymene, and of Cannes sent him from Carthage. I snap my fingers at your plans! Do you know what you ought to do? You ought to give me the details which you have received concerning the battle of Loano; and, since this map is unrolled at that very place, I would be interested in following the movements of our troops and the Austrians."
Barras drew from his pocket a note written with the laconism of a telegraphic despatch and handed it to Bonaparte.
"Patience," said he; "you have the map, and the command will follow, perhaps."
Bonaparte read the despatch eagerly.
"Good!" said he. "Loano is the key to Genoa, and Genoa is the magazine of Italy." Then, continuing to read the despatch, he said: "Masséna, Kellermann, Joubert, what men! and what could not a man do with them! He who could bring them together and make the most of their diverse qualities would be the veritable Olympian Jove with the thunderbolt in his hand!"
Then he murmured the names of Hoche, Kléber and Moreau, and, with a pair of compasses in his hand, he stretched himself out upon the great map, of which only one corner was uncovered. There he began to study the marches and counter-marches which had led up to the famous battle of Loano. When Barras took his departure, Bonaparte scarcely noticed it, so absorbed was he in his strategic combinations.
"It cannot have been Schérer," he said, "who devised and executed this movement. Neither can it have been Carnot; there is too great an element of the unexpected about it. It was doubtless Masséna."
He had been lying upon this map, which was never to leave him, for about half an hour, when the door opened and a voice announced: "The citizeness Beauharnais."
Bonaparte, in his abstraction, thought he heard the words, "The citizen Beauharnais," and, imagining that it was the young man whom he had already seen who had returned to thank him for the favor which he had just granted him, he exclaimed: "Let him come in, let him come in!"