a child.[72]

Passionately, in the throes of the creator, he is thus absorbed with
his coming creation; he already anticipates and enjoys living in his
imaginary edifice. "General," said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre to
him, one day, "you are building behind a scaffolding which you will
take down when you have done with it." "Yes, Madame, that's it,"
replied Bonaparte; "you are right. I am always living two years in
advance."[73] His response came with "incredible vivacity," as if a
sudden inspiration, that of a soul stirred in its innermost fiber. -
Here as well, the power, the speed, fertility, play, and abundance of
his thought seem unlimited. What he has accomplished is astonishing,
but what he has undertaken is more so; and whatever he may have
undertaken is far surpassed by what he has imagined. However vigorous
his practical faculty, his poetical faculty is stronger; it is even
too vigorous for a statesman; its grandeur is exaggerated into
enormity, and its enormity degenerates into madness. In Italy, after
the 18th of Fructidor, he said to Bourrienne:

"Europe is a molehill; never have there been great empires and great
revolutions, except in the Orient, with its 600,000,000
inhabitants."[74]

The following year at Saint-Jean d'Acre, on the eve of the last
assault, he added

"If I succeed I shall find in the town the pasha's treasure and arms
for 300,000 men. I stir up and arm all Syria. . . . I march on
Damascus and Aleppo; as I advance in the country my army will increase
with the discontented. I proclaim to the people the abolition of