"Italy is on fire with your name."
"I have founded chairs of philosophy, of history, and oratory, in most of the conquered cities."
"Montenotte will ever be one of the most glorious monuments of French valor."
"I have pensioned all the savants of Bologna, Florence, and Milan."
"You have rivaled the renown of the immortal generals of antiquity."
"Whenever a city was taken, my first care was to command public monuments and private property to be respected, and to prohibit under pain of death all outrage to women, and before I allowed guards to be planted at my own door, I took care sentinels were at the gates of every church and hospital."
"How you must have longed for repose, were it only to indulge the bright dreams of the future."
"The actual and the real for me. I like best to shut myself up in my quarters to pursue my favorite studies of mathematics and history."
Struck with enthusiastic admiration of such simplicity, and such wise moderation, Bernardin ceased any longer to pay forced compliments to the military prowess with which he had no sympathy, and now poured out his whole heart in homage to his noble qualities as a legislator and as a man. Could he do less than read to him some few pages of his "Harmonies"—the winding-up of his "Harmonies of Nature." To one of the three brothers, worthy to comprehend the sublimity of the science of Heaven, he had shown the stars; to another, tender as Rousseau, the flowers; and now the graver pages of his book to a third—graver, wiser than either—as wise as Marcus Aurelius; "nay, wiser," said Bernardin, "for I am sure he never would consent to be made emperor."
And now, who were these three officers of the Italian army?