He adds as another reason why he did not cease fire when he was ordered
that "without doubt the troops would have thought there was treason in it,
and I had probably been cut in pieces."

He did not understand what had happened at Valmy, though he was so useful
in securing the success of that day. All he noted was that after the
cannonade Kellermann had fallen back. He rode into St. Menehould, where
Dumouriez's head-quarters were, ran up to the top of the steeple and
surveyed the country around the enemy's camp with an enormous telescope,
laid a bet at dinner of five to one that the enemy would attack again
(they did not do so, and so he lost his bet, but he says nothing about
paying it), and then heard that France had been decreed a Republic.
His comment on this piece of news is strong but cryptical. "It was
surprising," he says, "to see what an effect this news had on the Army."

Every sentence betrays the personality: the keen, eccentric character
which took to balloons just after the Montgolfiers, and fell with his
balloon into the North Sea, wrote his Treatise on the use of such
instruments in War, and was never happy unless he was seeing or doing
something--preferably under arms. And in every sentence also there is that
curious directness of statement which is of such advantage to vivacity
in any memoir. Thus of Gobert, who served under him, he has a little
footnote: "This unfortunate young man lost his head at the same time
General Dillon suffered, and a very amiable young man he was, and an
excellent officer."

He ends his book in a phrase from which I think not a word could be taken
nor to which a word could be added without spoiling it. I will quote it in
full.