For a few moments longer the English ship was visible on the purpling belt of the horizon; then it disappeared.
On the morning of the next day, the watch sighted the coast of France. Yonder was Port-Vendres. Bonaparte fixed his gaze on the low, faint streak of land. A tumult of thoughts was surging in his mind. He had a striking and confused impression of arms and togas; in the silence of the sea an immense clamour filled his ears. And amidst visions of Grenadiers, magistrates, legislators and human crowds, he saw smiling and languishing, her handkerchief to her lips, her throat bare, Josephine, the remembrance of whom burned in his blood.
"General," said Gantheaume, pointing to the coast, which was growing bright in the morning sunshine, "I have brought you whither destiny called you. You, like Æneas, reach a shore promised you by the gods."
Bonaparte landed at Fréjus on the 17th of Vendémiaire in the year VIII.
[1] René de Vertot (1655-1735), author of three books on revolutions: Histoire des Révolutions de Suède, 1695; Histoire des Révolutions de Portugal, 1711; Histoire des Révolutions arrivées dans le gouvernement de la République romaine, 1720.
[THE CHÂTEAU DE VAUX-LE-VICOMTE]
[PREFACE]
In 1656, Foucquet was forty-one years of age. For five years he had been Attorney-General in the Paris Parliament, and for three Comptroller of Finance, having been the control of the Treasury at the troubles which had afflicted France during the minority of Louis XIV. He had successfully weathered a difficult period, and had acquired no little confidence in his genius and his guiding star. Now, in the prime of life, feeling securely established in office, he proceeded to order his life in accordance with the magnificence of his tastes. Ambitious, pleasure-loving, adoring all that was great and beautiful, sensitive to all that exalts or caresses the soul, he called upon the Arts to surround him with the symbols of glory and of pleasure. The miracles of Vaux were the outcome of this demand, which was first satisfied, then cruelly punished.