very plan he intended to carry into operation.

Of course, the allies thought that this was a foolish attempt
to draw their attention from the real point of attack. The more
they ridiculed the imaginary army at Dijon, the more loudly did
Napoleon reiterate his commands for battalions and magazines to be
collected there. The spies who visited Dijon, reported that but a
few regiments were assembled in that place, and that the announcement
was clearly a very weak pretense to deceive. The print shops of
London and Vienna were filled with caricatures of the army of the
First Consul of Dijon. The English especially made themselves very
merry with Napolcon's grand army to scale the Alps. It was believed
that the energies the Republic were utterly exhausted in raising the
force which was given to Moreau. One of the caricatures represented
the army as consisting of a boy, dressed in his father's clothes,
shouldering a musket, which he could with difficulty lift, and
eating a piece of gingerbread, and an old man with one arm and a
wooden leg. The artillery consisted of a rusty blunderbuss. This
derision was just what Napoleon desired. Though dwelling in the
shadow of that mysterious melancholy, which ever enveloped his
spirit, he must have enjoyed in the deep recesses of his soul, the
majestic movements of his plans.

On the eastern frontiers of France there surge up, from luxuriant
meadows and vine-clad fields and hill sides, the majestic ranges of
the Alps, piercing the clouds and soaring with glittering pinnacles,
into the region of perpetual ice and snow. Vast spurs of the mountains
extend on each side, opening gloomy gorges and frightful detiles,
through which foaming torrents rush impetuously, walled in by
almost precipitous cliffs, whose summits, crowned with melancholy