"Mamelukes, General," corrected Bourrienne.
"Ah, yes—I always get mixed in these matters—for the children of these Mamelukes, you may stick to the old form. Good-night."
And with that the conqueror went to sleep as peacefully as a little child.
Had Bonaparte now returned to France he would have saved himself much misery. King of fire though he had become in the eyes of the vanquished, his bed was far from being one of roses.
"In a climate like that," he observed, sadly, many years after, "I'd rather have been an ice baron. Africa got entirely too hot to cut any ice with me. Ten days after I had made my friend Ptolemy turn over in his grave, Admiral Nelson came along with an English fleet and challenged our Admiral Brueys to a shooting-match for the championship of Aboukir Bay. Brueys, having heard of what magazine writers call the ships of the desert in my control, supposing them to be frigates and not camels, imagined himself living in Easy Street, and accepted the challenge. He expected me to sail around to the other side of Nelson, and so have him between two fires. Well, I don't go to sea on camels, as you know, and the result was that after a twenty-four-hour match the camels were the only ships we had left. Nelson had won the championship, laid the corner-stone of monuments to himself all over English territory, cut me off from France, and added three thousand sea-lubbers to my force, for that number of French sailors managed to swim ashore during the fight. I manned the camels with them immediately, but it took them months to get their land legs on, and the amount of grog they demanded would have made a quick-sand of the Desert of Sahara, all of which was embarrassing."
But Napoleon did not show his embarrassment to those about him. He took upon himself the government of Egypt, opened canals, and undertook to behave like a peaceable citizen for a while.
"I needed rest, and I got it," he said. "Sitting on the apex of the pyramids, I could see the whole world at my feet, and whatever others may say to the contrary, it was there that I began to get a clear view of my future. It seemed to me that from that lofty altitude, chumming, as I was, with the forty centuries I have already alluded to, I could see two ways at once, that every glance could penetrate eternity; but I realize now that what I really got was only a bird's- eye view of the future. I didn't see that speck of a St. Helena. If I had, in the height of my power I should have despatched an expedition of sappers and miners to blow it up."
Quiescence might as well be expected of a volcano, however, as from a man of Bonaparte's temperament, and it was not long before he was again engaged in warfare, but not with his old success; and finally, the plague having attacked his army, Bonaparte, too tender-hearted to see it suffer, leaving opium for the sick and instructions for Kleber, whom he appointed his successor, set sail for France once more in September, 1799.
"Remember, Kleber, my boy," he said, in parting, "these Mussulmen are a queer lot. Be careful how you treat them. If you behave like a Christian you're lost. I don't want to go back to France, but I must. I got a view of the next three years from the top of Cheops last night just before sunset, and if that view is to be carried out my presence in Paris is positively required. The people are tired of the addresses given by the old Directory, and they're seriously thinking of getting out a new one, and I want to be on hand either to edit it or to secure my appointment to some lucrative consulship."
"You!—a man of your genius after a consulship?" queried Kleber, astonished.