Napoleon quotes

No one may touch this little kingdom of his in the garden, though part of it is usurped. He has an ardent feeling for his own independence. Writing to his father, he says: “

I would rather be the first among the workmen in a factory than the last among the artists in the Academy.

” Did he get the idea out of Plutarch? Certainly he has an enthusiasm for that author, the lives of the great men as sketched by Plutarch, especially the Roman heroes. Of these, he is always dreaming.

Three impulses stir his youthful heart: to despise and make use of his fellow-creatures, most of whom are empty-headed and pretentious; to extricate himself from the clutches of poverty; to learn much in order that he may rule others.

The means and the goal are one.

He is to be a leader in the struggle on the island, and then to make himself master of Corsica.

Books clamour it abroad.

Reading is free as breathing; and when a man has read all the books in the lending library, he can spare a franc or two now and again to buy a new book.

True, the youth lodges in a café, and the clicking of the billiard balls in the next room is tiresome. But it would be still more tiresome to move. In personal habits, he is conservative.

All were animated by hatred of France, but none of them were ever finished. Still he was learning his trade, spurred on by poverty, passion, and sentiment.

Imagination rules the world, but cannons are the instrument whereby imagination realises its purposes.

“I have no refuge but my work. I only change my linen once a week. Since I was ill, I have slept very little.... I eat only once a day.”

“The ambitious man, pale of countenance, laughing sardonically, plays with crime, and intrigue is his chosen instrument.... If, at length, he gets his hand on the rudder of power, he soon wearies of the adulation of the crowd....

Men of great ambition have sought happiness, and have found fame.

”

Sublime forebodings, worthy of any of the characters in Plutarch. Soon the author expresses himself more plainly. His ideal is Sparta; courage and strength are the outstanding virtues. A Spartan moved through life as a man moves in the plenitude of his powers. “

He was happy because he lived in accordance with his nature.

Only the strong man is good; the weakling is evil.” Another presage glows in the following utterance: “Men who are truly great are like meteors: they shine and consume themselves, that they may lighten the darkness of the earth.”

Soon the author expresses himself more plainly. His ideal is Sparta; courage and strength are the outstanding virtues. A Spartan moved through life as a man moves in the plenitude of his powers. “He was happy because he lived in accordance with his nature.

Only the strong man is good; the weakling is evil.

” Another presage glows in the following utterance: “Men who are truly great are like meteors: they shine and consume themselves, that they may lighten the darkness of the earth.”

A Spartan moved through life as a man moves in the plenitude of his powers. “He was happy because he lived in accordance with his nature. Only the strong man is good; the weakling is evil.” Another presage glows in the following utterance: “

Men who are truly great are like meteors: they shine and consume themselves, that they may lighten the darkness of the earth.

”

In Corsica, all go armed, and not the mountaineers alone; but orders from the coastland break unavailingly against the crags of the interior.

Every one, here, is his own king; every one, his own avenger.

Can there be a better field for this adventurer, who has nothing more to lose? He makes a third attempt to become master of the island.

If Lucien were to go to Marseilles, and whisper the suspicion in the commissary’s ears, Saliceti would soon be shouting it in the Convention.

A little island like Corsica is a hot-bed of intrigue.

Since public life is controlled by two or three families, family life becomes merged in public life.

But as he sails westward, and as the French coast draws near, our adventurer enjoys the sense of freedom that comes to him who is everywhere at home.

Such is the happy lot of the man who has no country.

“How shabby their dresses are!” thinks Letizia Buonaparte, when her two half-grown girls come home from the market with their poor purchases. The refugees are living on the fourth floor of a confiscated house in Marseilles (the owner, a nobleman, has been guillotined).

He expostulated with the People’s Commissary for War, who, in reply, twitted him with his youth. Napoleon looked the commissary, who knew little of active service, straight in the eyes, and said: “

A man matures quickly on the battle-field, and it is from the battle-field that I come.

” Refusal to obey orders; expectation of dire consequences; just as it had been three years before.

Announcing to his brother the impending transformation, he says that he himself is in the good graces of all the party leaders who will have military posts at their disposal. “The prospect is rosy. Even were it otherwise, a man must live in the present.

He who has courage, despises the future.

”

“You are asking me to perform miracles, and I cannot do that.... Only with prudence and foresight can we achieve great ends. It is but a step from victory to defeat.

In affairs of magnitude I have learned that, in the last resort, everything invariably turns upon a trifle.

” But to Carnot, the great army organiser, to whom he can say much that is unsuitable for his official dispatches, he writes, gnashing his teeth:

“The thirst of an army which lacked everything has been quenched. There is an excuse for the poor devils. They have spent three years in the marches of the Alps, and now I have led them into the Promised Land!

A famished soldier perpetrates excesses which make one ashamed of being a man....

I intend to restore order, for I will not remain in command of a robber band.... To-morrow I am going to have several privates and a corporal shot, for having looted the plate from a church. Discipline will be re-established within a day or two.

History inspires him.

While with rapid strokes he is making history, history gives his spirit wings.

In boyhood, he had studied Plutarch; as lieutenant, he had read the history of all times; now, from moment to moment, he turns the knowledge to account.

What he writes is the truth, but it is so skilfully adorned that it develops a life of its own as soon as the government communicates it to the press, and when from France it makes its way into foreign lands.

With the pen, Bonaparte rounds off the victories he has won with the sword.

“I have received your peace treaty with Sardinia. The army has approved it.”

But you are responsible for my having to express my feelings.... I cannot serve jointly with a man who regards himself as the best commander in Europe.

For the rest, one bad general is better than two good generals.

With war, as with governance, it is a question of tact.”

Friendship and winter, it is odious and spiteful. What more am I to expect of you? That you have ceased to love me? That is an old story. That you should hate me? Well and good. That is what I wish.

Everything degrades, save only hatred.

But indifference with a heart of marble, lack-lustre eyes, languid gait?... A thousand kisses, tender as my heart.”

During these days, when a suicide occurs among the troops, he issues an order: “

The soldier must conquer the pain and the melancholy of the passions.

”

But it is my fate to love you.... Take no part in the unhappiness of your husband, who lives only for you. It would be unjust if I were to ask you to love me as I love you.

Who can expect delicate lace to weigh as heavy as gold....

My fault is that nature has denied me the charms which might bind you to me.

Yet he chooses to halt, and to offer peace to the vanquished. True, the Army of the Rhine is still a good way off, whilst Austria and Hungary are arming themselves in frenzied haste.

To stay where he is as a menace, this is the conqueror’s logic.

Bonaparte, however, is a statesman. The Directors want peace before the elections, and he still has need of the Directors. How would it be if he, he alone, the soldier, were to bring France the peace for which she has been waiting five years?

How would it be if he, he alone, the soldier, were to bring France the peace for which she has been waiting five years? Is he to share the glory of this achievement with his rivals in the Army of the Rhine?

The fortune of war is uncertain, and none but the foolhardy will tempt it unless they must.

Once more he has broken the troops of the Empire, cut off as they are from the Rhenish armies. For a year, Europe has been afraid of the new commander;

Has he done with Italy now? Has not he got all he wants; has not he reached his end?

There is no end, for every step forward opens a new vista.

Venice is merely a springboard, whence he can start his swim into the open sea. The islands first; then the Adriatic; and now he contemplates a more distant horizon.

“Only in the East have there been great empires and mighty changes; in the East, where six hundred million people dwell.

Europe is a mole-hill!

”

“The sciences which are the glory of the human mind, the arts which beautify the world and bequeath great deeds to our offspring, must be cherished with especial care in free States.

All men of genius, all those who are famous in the world of learning, are Frenchmen, no matter to what country they may belong.

” Hitherto, such men have had to lead a retired life. Now, freedom of thought prevails; intolerance is a thing of the past, there are no despots left. The talented can foregather under his patronage, and fearlessly tell him all their wishes.

For the Paris Conservatoire, he instructs experts to make copies of the best Italian music. Writing on this topic, he says: “

Of all the arts, music has the strongest influence on the passions, and for that reason the legislator must make it one of his chief concerns.

An inspired symphony composed by a master cannot fail to stir our feelings, and has far more influence than a treatise on morality, which convinces our reason without affecting our conduct.”

Writing on this topic, he says: “Of all the arts, music has the strongest influence on the passions, and for that reason the legislator must make it one of his chief concerns.

An inspired symphony composed by a master cannot fail to stir our feelings, and has far more influence than a treatise on morality, which convinces our reason without affecting our conduct.

” When he becomes a member of the Institute, he flaunts this title at the head of all the letters he writes as commander-in-chief, and declares:

Not that we want to do so. Our wish is to give our citizens peace, and quickly.... You tell me that this, that, and the other are your instructions.

If, when the sun is shining, your instructions said that night had fallen, would you insist that it was dark?

”

“If I am seen three or four times at the theatre, people will cease to notice me,” he says to an intimate. “You expect me to be pleased by such public demonstrations?

There would be quite as big a crowd to see me guillotined!

”

Knowing them to be his secret enemies, he keeps out of their path, and has them watched by his brothers. He gathers information as to the relative strength of the various parties, and ponders his own course. “

Paris has no memory. A new reputation drives out an old one; and if I linger here inactive, I shall be lost.

I must not stay here.” Often he walks to and fro in the garden, arms locked behind, thinking.

Napoleon lies there, listening in silence. Then, pointing to the stars, he interjects:

“You may say what you like, but who made all those?”

Bonaparte rides slowly across the desert sands to look upon the face of the Sphinx. The eyes of stone and the eyes of steel meet. Like the Sphinx, he knows how to be silent, but we can guess his thoughts.

Bonaparte rides slowly across the desert sands to look upon the face of the Sphinx.

The eyes of stone and the eyes of steel meet.

Like the Sphinx, he knows how to be silent, but we can guess his thoughts.

All obeyed him as the descendant of the original conqueror. Because that first conqueror named himself king, and son of the gods, all believed him. Here, in the East, it is possible to say to human beings, ‘I am your god,’ and all believe.

Europe is a mole-hill.

”

“The peoples with whom we are now in contact do not treat their women as we treat ours. Nevertheless, any one who harms a woman is looked upon as a monster here as in Europe.

Looting enriches very few, dishonours all, destroys the sources of aid, and makes us hated by those with whom it is to our interest that we should be friends.

” No one is to enter a mosque, and groups must not even assemble round the doors.

Bourrienne tries to pacify him; tells him that fame is more important than family happiness.

“Fame! What is that worth? I would give everything in the world, so much do I love her, if only Junot’s news were false.”

But the English may intercept and publish anything he writes, so in his letter to his brother Joseph he can do no more than hint at this private calamity.

Make arrangements that as soon as I return home I shall have at my disposal a country house near Paris or in Burgundy, a place where I can spend the winter in absolute seclusion. Mankind has become loathsome to me. I need rest and solitude.

Greatness bores me to death.

The fount of feeling is dried up. At twenty-nine years of age, I find that fame is vanity. I’ve got to the end of everything. Only one resource is left to me, to become an absolute egoist.

Mankind has become loathsome to me. I need rest and solitude. Greatness bores me to death. The fount of feeling is dried up.

At twenty-nine years of age, I find that fame is vanity.

I’ve got to the end of everything. Only one resource is left to me, to become an absolute egoist. I shall keep my house in Paris, and not hand it over to any one!

A heart that desired to give itself wholly, in which trust had been ever renewed despite many disillusionments, now seems to have been pierced through and through. Victory, glory, to be a second Alexander—all dust and ashes.

If a man is deceived where he least deserves it, and where he has trusted with all the ardency of youth, what is greatness to him?

He begins his letter with rice and vegetables, and ends with solitude and utter disheartenment. What is left for him in the world besides his brother? “I have got to the end of everything.”

My plan was to weld the experiences of two worlds, to force history into my service, to attack the English power in India, and, through my conquests there, to reopen communications with Europe.”

Are these the visions of a poet? Or is it that the conqueror and the poet are close kin?

In Egypt, he has a romantic name for himself, “Sultan El Kebir”—he is, in truth, always the sultan, more or less. El Kebir is his third name, as visionary as the whole campaign.

Why can they not take the place by storm? Bonaparte has no patience for a slow siege, for starving his enemy into surrender. The whole idea is foreign to his impetuous temperament.

A fortress, like a woman, must be taken by storm, or not at all.

He cannot beg, serve, or woo; and he cannot wait. Now time presses, and to wait is out of the question. Storm!

After the victory at Aboukir, Napoleon enters into a parley with the admiral of the blockading fleet. Ostensibly he wishes to discuss an exchange of prisoners with the English.

Really he is hungering for news; newspapers are worth more than king’s crowns.

Some one manages to get hold of what he covets, and an adjutant brings them into his tent. The commander is asleep. “Here are newspapers, General. Bad news.” He sits up. “What’s happened?”

once more he escapes capture by the English. Night falls. Impossible to land at Toulon? Let us make for Fréjus, then. Uncharted rocks there? Rocks everywhere! In sight of the French coast after a seven weeks’ voyage, we must run all risks to land!

Does this Italian love the country on which he now sets his foot? To him it is nothing more than the fiddle on which he can play a better tune than on any other instrument.

Next day, in the little town of Fréjus, Bonaparte’s name is on every one’s lips. Why is the harbour full of rowing boats, laden with sightseers? Why this popular rejoicing?

“Force! How silly it was to use force four years ago! We see where it has led!

The supreme art is to maintain the appearance of legality.

Without cannon or bloodshed, without arrests and parties, that is the secret of the ideal coup d’état. Otherwise you set up something that may last a year before it wears out. After ten years of revolution, the republic is heartily sick of it all.

He can endure everything, except having to ask favours, and except having to submit to a law which is not of his own making.

He wants order and legality, but not such as existed before he established them!

With titanic energy, as he already foresees, he will lead this country towards order, will found an orderly State after a decade of chaos. No one will be the worse for humble birth or for poverty, since all will have equal opportunities.

“Do you know,” he said in those days, “what amazes me more than all else? The impotence of force to organise anything.

There are only two powers in the world: the spirit and the sword. In the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.

” Napoleon was the greatest military commander of his day, but neither now nor later was it his habit to strike the table with mailed fist, neither in Paris at this juncture nor elsewhere when negotiating a truce or a peace or an alliance.

I do not wish to seem better than I am.” When he noticed that the councillors were simply echoing whatever he said, he was quick to call them to order:

“You are not here, gentlemen, to agree with me, but to express your own views. If you do that, I can compare them with mine, and decide which is better.”

The sittings, often enough, do not begin before nine in the evening, for up till then the Consul has been dealing with the urgent affairs of the day. They may last till five o’clock in the morning.

He spoke to every expert in the phraseology of the craft, so that none of them could ever plead in excuse that his questions had not been understood. Even the most hidebound royalists were amazed at the technical accuracy of his enquiries.

His unfailing memory was the artillery wherewith he defended the fortress of his brain.

Ségur, returning from an official inspection of the fortifications on the north coast, sends in a report. “I have read your report,” says the First Consul. “It is accurate, but you have forgotten two of the four guns in Ostend.

A few weeks after the coup d’état, he issued a great proclamation, commending the new constitution to the people. It closed with the simple and lofty words:

“Citizens, the revolution has returned to the principles with which it began. It is at an end.”

“Returning to Europe after eighteen months’ absence, I find that war has broken out once more between the French Republic and Your Majesty. The French people summons me to the first position in the State.”

“I shall make an unlooked-for entry into Paris,” he rejoins, with malicious double meaning; “and I have no desire for triumphal arches or any kind of ceremonial. I have a sufficiently good conceit of myself to scorn such plummery.

The only genuine triumph is public content.

”

Said Fouché:

“We are still the children of the ancient Gauls, of whom it was said that they could neither endure liberty nor tolerate oppression.”

“I mean, Citizen Consul, that, in your last steps, the Parisians fancy they see the loss of liberty, and a tendency towards absolutism.”

Sound reasoning, appropriate measures.

But the spirit of free thought stands weeping at the door; her fascinated gaze is fixed upon power enthroned.

The man who was certainly in part responsible for the before-mentioned pamphlet, perhaps its author, the man who had thus inflicted a grave injury upon the First Consul, was the very man who had been his main buttress on the Eighteenth Brumaire, and who had …

At length the Consul, driven into a corner, exclaims:

“My natural heir is the French people.”

The man who speaks is not old. He is little more than thirty. Though he is appointed dictator for ten years only, he plainly foresees that he will be monarch. But he is already alarmed by the dangers of the position.

But, as he winged his soaring flight, the natural sequence was that wider and ever wider vistas of land and sea should unfold themselves before his eyes. What happened, was a fulfilment of his own guiding principle:

“He will not go far who knows from the first whither he is going.”

Improvisation, which, in amazing fashion, characterises so much of his activity, merely deprives him of the nebular glory of the mystical hero.

Does he see the dangers, or does he overlook them? What are his antitoxins?

“What is a throne? A piece of wood covered with satin!”

When he has become emperor he will ask the question and answer it thus, more than once.

She would have followed me into exile or imprisonment. Now I am to divorce her? I am not strong enough to do that.

A human heart beats in my bosom; my mother was not a tigress.

” After Josephine’s death, he would be free to choose a new partner. But, as things are, what will be the best way of solving this problem of the succession?

The ceremonial “was conducted as if to the sound of drums; everything seemed to happen at the storming pace; and the dread which he inspired in all, drove away grace and ease....

Court life was cold and dull, was gloomy rather than dignified.

Since we were following a prescribed ritual, our inner feeling was that we were only machines which some one had placed upon the new gilded couches.”

He eyes them for a moment, and replies with a witticism which deserves a place in universal history:

“When I listen to you, I can almost believe that His Majesty our father of blessed memory must have bequeathed us crown and realm!”

Indeed, one could almost believe it.

He had the impudence to talk to me about his rights and his interests! He wanted to touch me on the raw! He might almost as well have boasted he had slept with my mistress, or hoped to do so soon.

My mistress! Power is my mistress!

The conquest of that mistress has cost me so much that I will allow no one to rob me of her, or to share her with me!”

Talleyrand is in all respects the man of noble birth. Lame though he be, the prettiest women pay court to him.

His charm is that of a rolling sphere, whose living summit is everywhere and nowhere.

The assertion that he betrayed his master only for the sake of France, is belied by his immeasurable avarice and venality. For the nonce, he continues to serve the Emperor; but, from the first, the two men have mistrusted one another.

“A wonderful sight! The minute-guns were firing; watch-fires were lighted along the coast. A raging, foaming sea; uncertainty and anxiety throughout the night.

But a kindly spirit brooded over the ocean and the night.

No lives were lost, and I lay down to sleep with the feeling that I had been witnessing a romantic and epic vision—so that I could almost believe that I had been looking on quite alone.”

I am not ashamed to take the first step. It seems to me I have shown the world that I have no dread of war and its caprices.

My heart, indeed, longs for peace; but war has never dimmed my fame.

I implore Your Majesty not to deprive yourself of the good fortune of restoring peace to the world! Do not leave this precious task to your children. Never was there a more favourable opportunity of stilling angry passions.

But is not the scene we are describing a dream?

Must we really and truly believe that, little more than a century ago, a mortal man, the understudy of a demigod, stormed across modern Europe and remoulded it in accordance with his will?

Did it not all happen in the Homeric age, when two princes in single combat would settle the fate of generations?

her dependence is to be made clearer by the phrasing, “Napoleon bestows his brother on Holland.” The Dutch object? Then they shall be gobbled up; the choice is quickly made. Louis does not care for the honour; climate bad; health weak?

“It is better to die sitting on a throne, than to live a mere prince in France.”

Hortense must become a queen, Josephine is aglow for the consummation; the Dutch must present a solemn petition, and must be graciously received by the Emperor in the Tuileries.

“I love him more than all the others,” she says, “because he’s not been so lucky.” The Emperor is adamant: “No feelings of affection can weigh against reasons of State. I will only accept as relatives, those who serve me.

He who does not soar with me, ceases to belong to my family.

”

He answers her that “the agitation of your letter tells me that you beautiful women know of no limits to your powers. What you wish must come to pass.

I, on the other hand, recognise that I am the most enslaved of men. My master has no mercy on me, for my master is the nature of things.

”

The second creature in the world who asks nothing from him; his mother was the first. Never has he known another woman who did not expect his magician’s hand to shower on her the treasures of the universe: jewels, palaces, crowns, money.

This woman wants nothing from him, and gives him everything.

Countess Walewska is the quiet and loving companion whom Napoleon’s stormy soul has sought. It will be long before he will be willing to part from her. “She is an angel. It may justly be said that her spirit is as lovely as her features.”

He smiles, glancing at his demure little friend. “You marvel at my manifold activities? I have to keep watch on all my posts.

Before, I was only an acorn. Now I am an oak, the ruler of nations.

All eyes are fixed on me because I am in so outstanding a position. A man must play his part, and cannot always be natural. But, for you, I will become the acorn once more.” Simple words, tranquilly uttered.

“You marvel at my manifold activities? I have to keep watch on all my posts. Before, I was only an acorn. Now I am an oak, the ruler of nations. All eyes are fixed on me because I am in so outstanding a position.

A man must play his part, and cannot always be natural.

But, for you, I will become the acorn once more.” Simple words, tranquilly uttered.

He will see her again. They are both sure of this. But were he to forget her, he could read the posy in the ring she gives him:

“If you cease to love me, forget not that I love you.”

On the Memel, where it flows past Tilsit, a huge raft is anchored in mid-stream.

Thus, the man whose friendship is all-important to him seems to him utterly feminine. His final judgment takes the form of an overwhelming compliment:

“Were Alexander a woman, I think I should fall passionately in love with him.”

It is not surprising that such a man should in a trice be mastered by the seductions of the man of power; nor is it remarkable that subsequently the tsar should forsake the Emperor, for the surrender and the abandonment are both feminine.

“Liberty,” he wrote with too much truth in a private letter at the time of the issue of this decree, “liberty is only the need of the few whom nature has endowed with exceptional talent; and there is no danger in restricting it.

The crowd loves equality.

I do not injure the many when I distribute titles without raising the old question of birth; they are bourgeois crowns, which any one can win. Clever men impart their own movement to those whom they rule.

and there is no danger in restricting it. The crowd loves equality. I do not injure the many when I distribute titles without raising the old question of birth; they are bourgeois crowns, which any one can win.

Clever men impart their own movement to those whom they rule.

My movement is an upward one, and therefore the nation must move upwards....

But the young man of twenty-three who, coming at the end of this long family, had been reared as a prince, regarded his kingship as a gallant adventure, in which money and vital energy could be squandered.

Youth was like champagne, which bubbles when the cork is drawn.

He forsook the arms of his Württemberg consort for those of innumerable mistresses; ran into debt, became involved in manifold scandals, and procreated children all over the place; amused himself more than his subjects;

“I have read an order of the day issued by you, in which you make yourself ridiculous. You are king, and the Emperor’s brother! Fine qualities in war!

In war, a man must be a soldier before everything.

When I am in camp, I need neither ministers nor luxury. You must camp with the advance guard, be in the saddle day and night, march with the advance guard, so that you may get all the news without delay.

When he is in a friendly humour, he will end a letter full of reproaches with a paternal smile:

“Mon ami, I love you, but you are so frightfully young!”

Napoleon is no longer young. Inevitably, as his plans grow, there must be an increase in that harshness which, in him, is mainly the outcome of overwork.

All the more vigorously does his advance in years urge him towards a new marriage. There are long conversations between Napoleon and Josephine, between reason and sorrow; and after them it is not Josephine alone in whom the servants note the traces of tears.

“How terrible to die childless!”

he says on one occasion. Nevertheless his fondness for his helpmate increases. We know how difficult he found it to break with any of his collaborators; and his temperamental conservatism makes him cling to this first companion of his rise.

The impotence of the man of might is displayed in his own exclamations.

He asseverates his power to do anything and everything—and yet he dare not do what he wants.

How pleased he is with his brother, whose affairs he could manage so beautifully now that they have met after many years of separation.

The whole has been woven in the most natural way in the world.

Not by a miracle, but only through the working of his talents, has the man become master of men.

To-night he wants to add yet another to the long list of his subjects. He has not enough time, even though he hopes to live till he is ninety.

The princes by right of birth may dread to look at the Emperor, but at least their eyes will seek one another as if to secure a common understanding. They do not dare to smile.

They tremble before the man who sits there in a plain green coat, the man who is revolt incorporated in human form.

He knows what the German princes in the stalls do not yet know, that a new and stronger utterance will soon be made by Mahomet:

Something more serious than literary criticism is involved, for when Wieland ably defends his misuse of history, and goes on to speak of virtue as an example, the Emperor pulls him up with customary bluntness, saying:

“But don’t you know what happens to people who are always expounding virtue in the realm of fable and nowhere else? In the end they come to believe that virtue itself is nothing more than a fable.”

Napoleon turns back to Tacitus, for he always keeps a sharp eye on this Roman historian, as if the man, like Madame de Staël to-day, might still work mischief in Parisian drawing-rooms.

But the old man has for half a century been justly regarded as the wittiest among the Germans. He will show the Emperor that, in the intellectual world at any rate, a German can courteously exchange thrusts with a Frenchman, and he hastens to reply:

“I know that there are foolish people who doubt that Christ lived. But it would be just as absurd to doubt that Julius Cæsar lived; or that you, Sire, are alive to-day!”

Thus with a sally in the French manner Wieland upholds both German courtesy and wit, and the historicity of Christ. The Emperor, without committing himself, is content to drop the subject, and to clap the poet on the shoulder, saying: “Excellent, excellent, Herr Wieland!”

He spoke unfavourably of the drama of destiny, saying that it was a relic of less enlightened days:

“What have we to do with destiny now! Politics are destiny!”

As he utters these words, he gives an object lesson in his own fashion, turning to Daru to discuss requisitions, and then speaking to Soult who has just entered. Turning back to Goethe, he manœuvres to get the poet to himself, and asks personal questions.

The explanation is simple:

The Emperor wanted to make use of the poet, whereas the poet did not need the Emperor.

Napoleon wanted Goethe to write for him. But to Goethe, Napoleon’s actions were merely the precious material which enabled him to penetrate to the heart of the other’s genius; and he could do this without a journey to Paris.

The despatches from Rome and Paris are a week old, and those from Spain date from more than a fortnight back. By the time fresh orders from Schönbrunn can reach Valladolid, the whole position will have changed.

If only he had the power to issue his commands with the velocity of light, then he would be able to rule the world from this office on the Danube.

As things are, he must cut short the negotiations, which Austria, encouraged by England and Hungary, has been protracting for weeks. When, recently, the victor demanded a third of the monarchy, with nine million souls, he was met with a refusal.

Shortly after this, a masked ball was given by the arch-chancellor. Among the guests was Princess Metternich, whose husband had formerly been envoy at the court of Paris. A man clad in a green domino took her by the arm and led her aside.

Every one knew who he was, for although no one fully knew Napoleon unmasked, the masked Napoleon was impossible to mistake: the tragi-comedy of genius in this world.

After a few quips, he asked her whether she thought that an archduchess would accept the offer of his hand.

Eugene and Talleyrand are for Austria. Murat demurs, saying that Marie Antoinette had brought bad luck to France. Some voice the advantages of a Russian alliance. Others favour Saxony.

The Emperor listens to their views, closes the sitting, and does what he has already made up his mind to do.

That same evening he sends a message to Vienna. The only one present at the council who saw clearly was the minister who had strongly urged the claims of Russia, but who did not venture to utter his real reasons except in private;

He feels that his powers are ripening. In addition to the two energies we have been considering, a third is growing to maturity, the sense of destiny. Words unheard before, or rarely expressed, now find voice: “

I feel that I am being driven towards an unknown goal.

But as soon as I have reached it, as soon as I no longer have an inexorable mission, an atom will suffice to overthrow me. Till then, no human powers can effect anything against me. The days are numbered.”

“

I am in love with peace.

”

Yet in the past he had never failed to take this into account; at each step, he had questioned public opinion. Now, he allows the newfangled Bureau to manipulate public opinion: “

What do I care for the opinion of the drawing-rooms and the babblers! I recognise only one opinion, that of the peasants!

” Certain it is that the peasants are his most faithful supporters, mainly because he rescued their lands from the dangers threatened by the revolution.

It will be impossible to carry fodder for one hundred and fifty thousand horses. That is why he has waited till June, when the grass will be green. But what if the steppe should disappoint him here?

And what if his men’s spirit should disappoint him?

On the frontier, warning voices make themselves heard. He is told that these young recruits are hardly able to endure the long marches, and that the heat will be too much for them. In Dresden, Murat had vainly asked for furlough.

Those who command under him are too independent of one another (Davoust and Murat nearly fight a duel), and yet they are too dependent upon him. Never did he suffer more than in this campaign from the lack of speedy means of communication.

His was the central brain in all his undertakings, so that a telegraph would have been far more useful to him than to his opponents.

The Russians are aware of their own weakness. Neither of the two commanders ventures to stand firm. Both of them withdraw before the invaders, at first without any mutual understanding, to get into touch later, far in the rear.

but as the tempo is quickened, the difficulties are redoubled. There is no means, now, of providing for the army. The retreating Russians burn their storehouses. No bread, no vegetables, nothing but meat. Dysentery breaks out.

The horses eat the thatch from the roofs, and collapse in great numbers, so that their corpses line the road.

During this advance in which there are no battles, the Bavarian leader estimates the losses of his corps at nine hundred men a day.

The Emperor, indeed, is in sorry plight. King Lear upon the heath.

Power crumbles in fragments from his body; every gesture melts in the air; from afar the laughter of the rational world comes echoing, to be lost in the void.

An end must be made. A second message is sent to the tsar. No use writing, for that last letter from Vilna has remained unanswered. Once more a captured general is ushered into his presence, and once more the Emperor’s secret meditations are unveiled.

The advance guard of the French and the rear guard of the Russians are almost in touch.

It is a silent entry, for the town is like a city of the dead; the houses are empty.

“Still, there are plenty of houses,” think the weary campaigners; “we shall find food, and be able to sleep at our ease.”

Perhaps he had heard of the splendid words uttered by the German when the news of the burning of Moscow had arrived. Stein, sitting at table, had raised his glass, and had exclaimed: “Three or four times, ere this, I have lost my baggage.

We must get used to throwing away such things. Since we must die, let us be valiant.

”

If so, then there is no hope left to us! On you the whole future of the army depends!” He marches among them. A silent procession (thus described by one who met it): first come the generals, few of whom are mounted.

Ghosts in rags, in scorched cloaks, lean, grey, with matted beards, bent and silent: prisoners of fate.

These are followed by the Holy Legion, a legion composed of officers, most of them leaning upon sticks, their feet swathed in remnants of sheepskin. Then come the survivors of the cavalry guard.

No, only a couple of hours. It is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. How are you, Monsieur Stanislas?... Dangers? Not a bit of it. I thrive on excitement. The more I am tossed to and fro, the better I feel.

The shadow kings grow fat in their palaces, but I put on flesh when riding my nag in the field....

So you’ve been anxious here? The army is in splendid condition. I have still one hundred and twenty thousand men! Gave the Russians a good hiding everywhere. They never ventured to stand up against me. The army will winter in Vilna.

“How long have I been in Warsaw? A week? No, only a couple of hours.

It is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

How are you, Monsieur Stanislas?... Dangers? Not a bit of it. I thrive on excitement. The more I am tossed to and fro, the better I feel.

Any one who wishes to build up a State once more, must be guided by the very opposite principles.

History depicts the human heart, and we must study history if we would learn the merits and defects of legislation....

When I undertook the reconstruction of France, my prayer was that I might be spared for a considerable number of years, seeing that what has been destroyed in a moment will take a long time to refashion. The State needs courageous officials.

“Among those who are born to sit on the throne, the ties of nature count for nothing. The interests of his daughter and his grandson will not move Emperor Francis an inch from the calculations of his cabinet.

These men have no blood in their veins, nothing but frozen politics!

What pygmies they are, the kings by the grace of God—and the grace of Napoleon! My leniency has been my blunder. In Tilsit I could have crushed them, but I was too generous.

“What you are asking is that I shall dishonour myself. I will die rather than cede a hand’s breadth of soil.

Your born kings can accept defeat twenty times over, and still go back to their palaces. I am the child of fortune, and I cannot do this!

My power will not outlast the day on which I cease to be strong, on which I cease to be feared.... Through the cold of Russia I lost everything except honour.... Now I have a new army; you shall see it;

“You are not a soldier. You do not know what passes in a soldier’s mind. I grew to manhood on the battle-field.

Such a man as I does not care a snap of the fingers for the lives of a million men!

” He flings his hat into a corner of the room. Now, there is nothing assumed about his anger, and what he has just said is the revelation of an innermost truth.

“It was exceedingly stupid of me to marry an archduchess. I was trying to weld the new with the old, to make Gothic prejudices square with the institutions of my own century. Now I can see the whole extent of my error!

The blunder may cost me my throne, but I will bury the world beneath its ruins!

”

Next day he announces that they will go to Leipzig. It is October 15th: general animation; orders are issued; every one is delighted. Discussing with Marmont the latest steps of the Habsburg ruler, Napoleon says in conclusion: “

I prefer a man of honour who simply keeps his word, to a conscientious man who does what he thinks right....

Emperor Francis has done what he believes to be the best for his subjects; he is conscientious, but he is not a man of honour.”

“

No, I will die standing.

”

“

The throne is nothing more than a piece of wood covered with satin.

I, and I alone, represent the people. I am the State. If France wants a different constitution, let her find another monarch for herself. Do you think my words proud?

Here we have General Bonaparte once more.

The red of sunset reminds us of the glories of sunrise.

Owing to Marmont’s retreat, the Emperor is left unsupported at Arcis-sur-Aube, and has no more than a few thousand men with which to face a great army. Defeat is inevitable. During the height of the battle, a dust eddy sweeps across the field.

Six thousand Cossacks take to flight. It is years upon years since he has led a cavalry attack. His horse is shot under him, and he mounts another. Berthier reports that the Emperor was obviously hoping to find death on the field.

But death does not come for the asking.

No more than Cæsar, Cromwell, or Frederick, is Napoleon destined for this swift, heroic end. Such men are something more than military commanders, and must live out their lives as leaders of nations,—even though they have to fight against their own nation.

Suicide is incompatible with my principles and with the position I have occupied in the world.” They walk up and down the terrace in silence for a time, and then he says with a smile: “

Between ourselves, a living drummer is better than a dead emperor!

”

I work hard in my study; when I emerge I have the delightful spectacle of my old grenadiers in front of me....

Born kings must suffer terribly when they are dethroned, for pomp and etiquette are the very marrow of their lives.

For my part, I have always been a soldier, and became a king only by chance, so that these things have been nothing but a burden to me, whereas wars and camps come naturally. Out of my great past, I regret naught but my soldiers.

For my part, I have always been a soldier, and became a king only by chance, so that these things have been nothing but a burden to me, whereas wars and camps come naturally. Out of my great past, I regret naught but my soldiers.

After all my treasures and my crowns, my most cherished possessions are the couple of French uniforms they have allowed me to keep.

”

Calculations, only calculations; and never has he reckoned more soberly. None the less, though he considers his figures with the utmost care, in the last resort he relies upon psychological reactions. “I count upon taking them by surprise.

A bold deed upsets people’s equanimity, and they are dumbfounded by a great novelty.

” He adds: “I am the cause of France’s unhappiness. I must effect a cure.” In the end of February, he sends for his treasurer. “Have you plenty of money? How much does a million in gold weigh?

“

Follow your destiny. It cannot be God’s will that you are to die from poison, or after an inactive old age; though it may well be his will that you are to die sword in hand.

Let us put our trust in Mother Mary.”

That is what your fate would have been.... Have you read Chateaubriand’s pamphlet? Is it true that I am a coward on the battle-field? They are always accusing me of ambition because they have nothing better to say.

Does one get as fat as I, if one is constantly being spurred on by ambition?

... Once again, General, we must serve France. Then we can be gathered to our fathers.”

I understand liberty; I was nourished on this idea. The labours of fifteen years have been destroyed; if I wished to begin all over again, I should need twenty years and should have to sacrifice two million men....

I want peace; I can get it only through victory.

I will not fill you with false hopes; I foresee a terrible war. In order to win through, I must have the support of the people. The people will ask for freedom in exchange for its support. Very well, the people shall have freedom....

One can get ill from over-eating, but never from under-eating.” The alternation between campaigning and sedentary life enables him again and again to escape from the air of the study, and to fortify his constitution by long rides and drives. “

Water, air, and cleanliness are my favourite medicines.

”

after great exertions, he will keep his room for twenty-four hours. He believes that his energy has saved his life. He says to Metternich: “

Sometimes death only comes from lack of energy.

Yesterday, when I was thrown out of my carriage, I thought I was done for. But I had just time to say to myself that I would not die. Any one else in my place would have been killed.”

Another time, he speaks of Corneille, but he means himself when he says: “Whence did this man acquire his antique greatness? From himself, from his soul? Very well. Do you know what that is called, My Lord Cardinal? It is called genius.

Genius is a flame, which comes from heaven, but seldom finds a head ready to receive it.

Corneille is a man whom the world has recognised.” When his interlocutor observed that the poet had not seen the flame, so how could he recognise it, the Emperor answered scornfully: “Precisely for that reason I consider he is a great man!”

He calls interest the key to ordinary deeds; the will to govern the intellect, he describes as the strongest of all the passions: and the artistic urge of genius, he depicts in the following words: “

I love power, yes, I love it, but after the manner of an artist: as a fiddler loves his fiddle in order to conjure from it tone, chords, harmonies.

”

That is why it is his nature to command. “

Wherever I may be, I command, or else I keep silence.

” He might have added: “I negotiate,” for he had spent a quarter of his time in negotiating. Even as a young general of twenty-seven, he aroused the respect of all who came in contact with him. He never learned to obey;

This statement is all the more surprising since it was made during a campaign, when tent life usually breaks down barriers. With absolute ingenuousness he once said, while playing and chatting with friends at Malmaison: “

I have no sense of the ridiculous. Power is never ridiculous.

”

His unsophisticated and frank realism, the sterling simplicity of his character, shows itself in a hundred gestures and words, and in the freshness with which he repeatedly makes fun of his own ardency. He expresses this in a profound saying: “

A truly great man will rise superior to the events which he himself has brought about.

” The greatest successes, whose fateful origin and consequences he fully grasps, he sums up to his intimates in a schoolboy’s laugh.

Years afterwards, he refuses to admit Bourrienne to the Legion of Honour, saying: “

One who worships the golden calf may have money, but not honour.

” When a bill signed by King Jerome goes to protest, Napoleon writes: “Sell your diamonds, your silver plate, your furniture, your horses—anything to pay your debts. Honour comes first!”

He is a stickler for morality, just as he is for honour. “

Nothing can be worse in a ruler than immorality. He makes it fashionable, and it poisons society.

” Napoleon does not say this merely because he has been warned by the example of the Bourbons and the Directors. He has an inborn sense of decency, which is part of his dignity.

How can one show so little tact and good breeding for all one owes the Emperor as to stress the question of his ancestry?” Once he is so angry because some one has contradicted him in this matter of his genealogy that he exclaims: “

I shall not suffer any one to insult me by treating me as if I were a king!

”

The whole problem of hereditary succession is implicit in these considerations; it logically develops therefrom, leading to the second marriage, and thus to the tragical issue.

There are only two things which Napoleon cannot create unaided: children and ancestors.

He therefore asks the world of legitimate rulers to enter into an alliance with him, which will settle his difficulty as far as offspring is concerned, and will also provide his children with an ancestry.

He is animated by a daimonic being’s eager wish for immortality, although he knows that he must share the fate of all mortal men. “

Better never to have lived; than to exist, and pass without leaving a trace.

”

He is not hampered by any principle; is always willing to modify his scheme to suit the weather of destiny, to adapt his combinations to the slightest modifications of the situation.

This man of iron will had a most supple intelligence.

While forcing all those with whom he came in contact to bend before his resolves, he himself showed a wonderful elasticity in compliance with the will of circumstances.

I feel the pain an hour later.” This sometimes makes him appear more stoical than he might wish people to believe him. When Hortense’s boy dies, he tells her to be composed, saying: “

To live means to suffer; but the brave man is continually striving for self-mastery, and achieves it in the end.

”

But he despises the “chivalrous” courage of the duel, which he crushingly describes as “cannibal courage.”—“Since you have both fought at Marengo and Austerlitz you do not need to give any further proofs of your courage.

Women are fickle, and so is good luck.

Go back to your regiments and become comrades again.”

At another time he will maintain that it is the superior numbers or the moral courage of the troops which constitutes the deciding factor. Sometimes he even goes so far as to say that inspiration decides an issue: “

The result of a battle hangs on a thread and is mostly the outcome of a sudden thought.

One approaches the enemy according to a prearranged plan, one comes to blows, one fights for a while, the critical moment draws near, a spark of inspiration flames up—and a small reserve division does the rest!”

The soldier understands him, because Napoleon is simple. The Emperor even describes war as “a simple art like everything that is beautiful.” By this contention he seems to uphold the idea that war is the highest of all arts. “

The military profession is a freemasonry ... and I am the grand master of its lodge.

”

He writes to Jerome, commenting on a report from Silesia: “Besides, your letter is too clever for my taste....

What a man needs in war is precision, firmness, simplicity.

” When Joseph plays the prince in Boulogne, and vies with Marshal Soult in the splendour of his receptions, Napoleon scolds him. “In the army, no one must put the commander in the shade.

‘In his mental qualities: insight, calculation, decision, eloquence, knowledge of men.’ But all these qualities are what make a man shine in civil life.... If bodily vigour and courage sufficed the commander, any brave private could be a leader of armies.

Everywhere, crude force now yields ground to moral qualities.

The man with the bayonet bows before the man who possesses exceptional knowledge and understanding.... I knew perfectly well what I was about when, as the head of the army, I bore the title of Member of the Institute;

“

War is an anachronism.

Some day, victories will be won without cannon and without bayonets.... Whoever troubles the peace of Europe, wants civil war.”

Thus is human nature created: upbringing and circumstance do the rest.” Since, for twenty years, he needed this human nature, daily and in quantities of a hundred at a time, the subtlest knowledge of it was a primary condition of his success.

Among all the materials which Napoleon bent to his uses, the human heart was the most familiar.

“I am a great friend of analysis.... ‘Why’ and ‘How,’ are such useful questions, that they cannot be uttered too often.”

Yet to Napoleon the Mephistophelian conception of men was as alien as it was to Goethe. He said: “

Most people bear within themselves the seeds of good and of evil, of courage and of cowardice.

Thus is human nature created: upbringing and circumstance do the rest.” Since, for twenty years, he needed this human nature, daily and in quantities of a hundred at a time, the subtlest knowledge of it was a primary condition of his success.

He is fond of reproving people. “According as they react, I discover the pitch of their souls.

If I strike brass with a glove, it gives back no tone: but if I strike with a hammer, it rings out.

” A person meeting Napoleon for the first time, is gripped by the magnetism of his glance.

“Tact, and putting all the cards on the table, will do better service in diplomacy than cunning. The tricks of the diplomats of the old school are out of date; all their rogueries have been exposed long since....

Nothing betrays weakness more than the attempt to deceive.

”

in Dresden, though he is the king of Saxony’s guest, he plays the master. He avoids having anything to do with queens. When Queen Louise pathetically implores justice, he begs her to sit down. “Nothing interrupts a tragical scene more effectually than this.

When people sit down, tragedy becomes comedy.

”

“I know not what I do, for everything depends on events. I have not a will of my own, but expect everything from their outcome....

The greater one is, the less can one have a will. One is always dependent upon events and circumstances.

” Such words, casually introduced into a letter from husband to wife, express the distantly visible forms of his fantasy;

The effects underlying his energy and his imagination are dominated by the clarity of his thought.

Napoleon hated less, and loved more, than he would have been willing to admit.

In this domain, we find the converse of what happens in the matter of his sympathies in war time, when a million men are coldly sacrificed, while one man wounded and bleeding touches him to the heart.

I was profoundly moved by the dog’s suffering, and at that moment I should have been very much in the mood to grant quarter to an enemy. I understood why Achilles surrendered Hector’s body to the weeping Priam.

Such is man; so little can he count upon his moods.

Impassively I had sent my soldiers into the battle; dry-eyed I had watched them marching past in an advance where thousands of them would meet their fate; then I was shaken to the depths by the howling of a dog.”

I understood why Achilles surrendered Hector’s body to the weeping Priam. Such is man; so little can he count upon his moods.

Impassively I had sent my soldiers into the battle; dry-eyed I had watched them marching past in an advance where thousands of them would meet their fate; then I was shaken to the depths by the howling of a dog.

”

People deceive themselves in these matters; they cannot even love all their children with the same intensity. For my part, at any rate, I want to be the supreme object of affection in the case of those whom I love and honour with my confidence.

I cannot bear partings. They stab me to the heart, for my disposition is too sensitive; spiritual poison affects the body more powerfully than arsenic.

”

In his strongest moments, he feels that he wears armour of proof: “I have a soul of marble. The lightnings were unable to destroy it, but broke on it in vain.” Once he expresses his defiance even more poetically: “

Should the heavens fall down on us, we shall hold them off with the points of our lances!

”

A modern tragedy depicts a man who wishes to die. Napoleon says that the portrait is well limned, but unnatural: “

A man must wish to live, and must know how to die.

” That is why, from youth upwards, he opposes suicide; first, in an essay; then, in an order of the day; then, with the reiterated argument that suicide is cowardice, especially in hours of misfortune.

Nothing else could restore his inner peace of mind; for, since he loved less than most, he was doomed to a tragical loneliness, the price he had to pay for his egotism. “There is neither happiness nor unhappiness,” he said. “

The life of a happy man is a picture showing black stars on a silver background. The life of an unhappy man is a picture showing silver stars on a black background.

” But it is not these heroic images which best characterise the loneliness of a soul. Even more poignant voices reach us from the familiar arena of the daily struggle:

“

The whole time I was bearing the world on my shoulders. ’Tis rather a tiring job!

”

Forth from the midst of the sea, projects the gloomy mass of rock. Steep, black, and deeply furrowed are the walls of lava that run down from the heights into the waves.

The chasm above the harbour looks like the gate of hell to one who first sees it from a ship; and the traveller fancies that these dark ramparts must have been built by the hands of demons.

Nothing betrays the work of man but the cannon placed among the rocks. When the voyager lands, the ground crunches softly beneath his feet, for the soil is made of disintegrated lava. He is treading the road of death.

“

Another victory over time. One day the less!

”

“Snatched from his family, torn from his home, robbed of himself, sold into slavery! Was there ever a greater piece of wickedness? If a captain did it, he was a villain; but if the crew combined to seize poor Tobias, they were hardly responsible.

Wickedness is always individual, never collective.

Joseph’s brethren could not make up their minds to kill him, but Judas betrayed his master.”

The world has its eyes fixed on us. We are the martyrs of an immortal cause! Millions weep for us, the fatherland sighs, the spirit of glory mourns....

Adversity, too, has its heroism and its fame.

Had I died on the throne, surrounded by all the emblems of power, I should have remained a riddle to many. To-day the wrappings have been stripped from me; thanks to my misfortunes, every one can judge me in my nakedness.”

With a sublimity of spirit which grows in him now, he tries to moderate the natural rebelliousness of his disposition: “I am living here under a weight, so to speak; a weight which compresses the spring, but does not break it.

Resignation—that is the dominion of reason, the real triumph of the soul.

” This masterful man does his utmost to regulate his own conduct in accordance with the foregoing axiom. Subsequently he says: “Misfortune has its good side; it teaches us truths.... For the first time, I am able to contemplate history as a philosopher.”

Dinner frs. 1.50; reading room; theatre in the evening, pit; I should hire a room for frs. 20 a month. I should only want one servant; and I should associate exclusively with people of like fortune. One can be happy in any station in life.

When my mother sang lullabies over my cradle, there was not a word about what I was destined to become.

I believe ‘Monsieur Bonaparte’ would have been quite as happy as ‘Emperor Napoleon.’ Everything in life is relative.”

For whose benefit? The money is to be used to buy the freedom of the most beautiful female slave on the island. One evening, his companions find him at work beside the lamp, slowly and carefully stitching the pages of a manuscript.

Sometimes, however, his dreams reawaken, and flutter against the bars of the cage.

“I wish they would transfer me to a desert island, where I could have two thousand people of my own choice, with muskets and cannon. I should found a glorious colony, and should end my days happily in that model land.

“

It is not a handful of nobles or rich men that makes a nation, but the mass of the people.

True, as soon as the mob gains the upper hand it adopts an alias, and speaks of itself as the People; whereas, if it is conquered, a few poor wretches are hanged, and spoken of as robbers and rebels. ’Tis the way of the world:

“

Taking it all in all, what a ballad my life has been!

”