Bonaparte's dominant passion.—His lucid, calculating mind.—Source and power of the Will.—Early evidences of anactive, absorbing egoism.—His education derived from thelessons of things.—In Corsica.—In France during theRevolution.—In Italy.—In Egypt.—His idea of Society andof Right.—Maturing after the 18th of Brumaire.—His idea ofMan.—It conforms to his character
It is egoism, not a passive, but an active and intrusive egoism, proportional to the energy and extension of his faculties developed by his education and circumstances, exaggerated by his success and his omnipotence to such a degree that a monstrous colossal I has been erected in society. It expands unceasingly the circle of a tenacious and rapacious grasp, which regards all resistance as offensive, which all independence annoys, and which, on the boundless domain it assigns to itself, is intolerant of anybody that does not become either an appendix or a tool.—The germ of this absorbing personality is already apparent in the youth and even in the infant.
"Character: dominating, imperious, and stubborn,"
says the record at Brienne.1224And the notes of the Military Academy add;1225
"Extremely inclined to egoism,"—"proud, ambitious, aspiring in all directions, fond of solitude,"
undoubtedly because he is not master in a group of equals and is ill at ease when he cannot rule.
"I lived apart from my comrades," he says at a later date.1226—"I had selected a little corner in the playgrounds, where I used to go and sit down and indulge my fancies. When my comrades were disposed to drive me out of this corner I defended it with all my might. My instinct already told me that my will should prevail against other wills, and that whatever pleased me ought to belong to me."
Referring to his early years under the paternal roof at Corsica, he depicts himself as a little mischievous savage, rebelling against every sort of restraint, and without any conscience.1227"I respected nothing and feared nobody; I beat one and scratched another; I made everybody afraid of me. I beat my brother Joseph; I bit him and complained of him almost before he knew what he was about." A clever trick, and one which he was not slow to repeat. His talent for improvising useful falsehoods is innate; later on, at maturity, he is proud of this; he makes it the index and measure of "political superiority," and "delights in calling to mind one of his uncles who, in his infancy, prognosticated to him that he would govern the world because he was fond of lying."1228
Remark this observation of the uncles—it sums up the experiences of a man of his time and of his country; it is what social life in Corsica inculcated; morals and manners there adapted themselves to each other through an unfailing connection. The moral law, indeed, is such because similar customs prevail in all countries and at all times where the police is powerless, where justice cannot be obtained, where public interests are in the hands of whoever can lay hold of them, where private warfare is pitiless and not repressed, where every man goes armed, where every sort of weapon is fair, and where dissimulation, fraud, and trickery, as well as gun or poniard, are allowed, which was the case in Corsica in the eighteenth century, as in Italy in the fifteenth century.—Hence the early impressions of Bonaparte similar to those of the Borgias and of Macchiavelli; hence, in his case, that first stratum of half-thought which, later on, serves as the basis of complete thought; hence, the whole foundation of his future mental edifice and of the conceptions he subsequently entertains of human society. Afterwards, on leaving the French schools and every time he returns to them and spends any time in them, the same impressions, often renewed, intensify in his mind the same final conclusion. In this country, report the French commissioners,1229"the people have no idea of principle in the abstract," nor of social interest or justice. "Justice does not exist; one hundred and thirty assassinations have occurred in ten years.... The institution of juries has deprived the country of all the means for punishing crime; never do the strongest proofs, the clearest evidence, lead a jury composed of men of the same party, or of the same family as the accused, to convict him; and, if the accused is of the opposite party, the juries likewise acquit him, so as not to incur the risk of revenge, slow perhaps but always sure."—"Public spirit is unknown." There is no social body, except any number of small parties hostile to each other.... One is not a Corsican without belonging to some family, and consequently attached to some party; he who would serve none, would be detested by all.... All the leaders have the same end in view, that of getting money no matter by what means, and their first care is to surround themselves with creatures entirely devoted to them and to whom they give all the offices.... The elections are held under arms, and all with violence.... The victorious party uses its authority to avenge itself on their opponents, and multiplies vexations and outrages... . The leaders form aristocratic leagues with each other.... and mutually tolerate abuses. They impose no assessment or collection (of taxes) to curry favor with electors through party spirit and relationships.... Customs-duties serve simply to compensate friends and relatives.... Salaries never reach those for whom they are intended. The rural districts are uninhabitable for lack of security. The peasants carry guns even when at the plow. One cannot take a step without an escort; a detachment of five or six men is often sent to carry a letter from one post-office to another."
Interpret this general statement by the thousands of facts of which it is the summary; imagine these little daily occurrences narrated with all their material accompaniments, and with sympathetic or angry comments by interested neighbors, and we have the moral lessons taught to young Bonaparte.1230At table, the child has listened to the conversation of his elders, and at a word uttered, for instance, by his uncle, or at a physiognomic expression, a sign of approbation, a shrug of the shoulders, he has divined that the ordinary march of society is not that of peace but of war; he sees by what ruses one maintains one's-self, by what acts of violence one makes ones way, by what sort of help one mounts upward. Left to himself the rest of the day, to the nurse Ilaria, or to Saveria the housekeeper, or to the common people amongst whom he strays at will, he listens to the conversation of sailors or of shepherds assembled on the public square, and their simple exclamations, their frank admiration of well-planned ambuscades and lucky surprises, impress more profoundly on him, often repeated with so much energy, the lessons which he has already learned at home. These are the lessons taught by things. At this tender age they sink deep, especially when the disposition is favorable, and in this case the heart sanctions them beforehand, because education finds its confederate in instinct. Accordingly, at the outbreak of the Revolution, on revisiting Corsica, he takes life at once as he finds it there, a combat with any sort of weapon, and, on this small arena, he acts unscrupulously, going farther than anybody.1231If he respects justice and law, it is only in words, and even here ironically; in his eyes, law is a term of the code, justice a book term, while might makes right.
A second blow of the coining-press gives another impression of the same stamp on this character already so decided, while French anarchy forces maxims into the mind of the young man, already traced in the child's mind by Corsican anarchy; the lessons of things provided by a society going to pieces are the same as those of a society which is not yet formed.—His sharp eyes, at a very early period, see through the flourish of theory and the parade of phrases; they detect the real foundation of the Revolution, namely, the sovereignty of unbridled passions and the conquest of the majority by the minority; conquering or conquered, a choice must be made between these two extreme conditions; there is no middle course. After the 9th of Thermidor, the last veils are torn away, and the instincts of license and domination, the ambitions of individuals, fully display themselves. There is no concern for public interests or for the rights of the people; it is clear that the rulers form a band, that France is their prey, and that they intend to hold on to it for and against everybody, by every possible means, including bayonets. Under this civil régime, a clean sweep of the broom at the center makes it necessary to be on the side of numbers.—In the armies, especially in the army of Italy, republican faith and patriotic abnegation, since the territory became free, have given way to natural appetites and military passions.1232Barefoot, in rags, with four ounces of bread a day, paid in assignats which are not accepted in the markets, both officers and men desire above all things to be relieved of their misery; "the poor fellows, after three years of longing on the summits of the Alps, reach the promised land, and want to enjoy it."1233Another spur consists in the pride which is stimulated by the imagination and by success; add to this the necessity for finding an outlet for their energy, the steam and high pressure of youth; nearly all are very young men, who regard life, in Gallic or French fashion, as a party of pleasure and as a duel. But to feel brave and to prove that one is so, to face bullets for amusement and defiantly, to abandon a successful adventure for a battle and a battle for a ball, to enjoy ones-self and take risks to excess, without dissimulating, and with no other object than the sensation of the moment,1234to revel in excitement through emulation and danger, is no longer self-devotion, but giving one's-self up to one's fancies; and, for all who are not harebrained, to give one's-self up to one's fancies means to make one's way, obtain promotion, pillage so as to become rich, like Massena, and conquer so as to become powerful, like Bonaparte.—All this is understood between the general and his army from the very first,1235and, after one year's experience, the understanding is perfect. One moral is derived from their common acts, vague in the army, precise in the general; what the army only half sees, he sees clearly; if he urges his comrades on, it is because they follow their own inclination. He simply has a start on them, and is quicker to make up his mind that the world is a grand banquet, free to the first-comer, but at which, to be well served, one must have long arms, be the first to get helped, and let the rest take what is left.
So natural does this seem to him, he says so openly and to men who are not his intimates; to Miot, a diplomat, and to Melzi a foreigner:
"Do you suppose, says he to them,1236after the preliminaries of Leoben, "that to make great men out of Directory lawyers, the Carnots' and the Barras, I triumph in Italy? Do you suppose also that it is for the establishment of a republic? What an idea! A republic of thirty million men! With our customs, our vices, how is that possible? It is a delusion which the French are infatuated with and which will vanish along with so many others. What they want is glory, the gratification of vanity—they know nothing about liberty. Look at the army! Our successes just obtained, our triumphs have already brought out the true character of the French soldier. I am all for him. Let the Directory deprive me of the command and it will see if it is master. The nation needs a chief, one who is famous though his exploits, and not theories of government, phrases and speeches by ideologists, which Frenchmen do not comprehend.... As to your country, Monsieur de Melzi, it has still fewer elements of republicanism than France, and much less ceremony is essential with it than with any other... In other respects, I have no idea of coming to terms so promptly with Austria. It is not for my interest to make peace. You see what I am, what I can do in Italy. If peace is brought about, if I am no longer at the head of this army which has become attached to me, I must give up this power, this high position I have reached, and go and pay court to lawyers in the Luxembourg. I should not like to quit Italy for France except to play a part there similar to that which I play here, and the time for that has not yet come—the pear is not ripe."
To wait until the pear is ripe, but not to allow anybody else to gather it, is the true motive of his political fealty and of his Jacobin proclamations: "A party in favor of the Bourbons is raising its head; I have no desire to help it along. One of these days I shall weaken the republican party, but I shall do it for my own advantage and not for that of the old dynasty. Meanwhile, it is necessary to march with the Republicans," along with the worst, and' the scoundrels about to purge the Five Hundred, the Ancients, and the Directory itself, and then re-establish in France the Reign of Terror.—In effect, he contributes to the 18th of Fructidor, and, the blow struck, he explains very clearly why he took part in it:
"Do not believe1237I did it in conformity with the ideas entertained by those with whom I acted. I did—not want a return of the Bourbons, and especially if brought back by Moreau's army and by Pichegru... Finally, I will not take the part of Monk, I will not play it, and I will not have others play it.... As for myself, my dear Miot, I declare to you that I can no longer obey; I have tasted command and I cannot give it up. My mind is made up. If I cannot be master I will leave France."
There is no middle course for him between the two alter natives. On returning to Paris he thinks of "overthrowing the Directory,1238dissolving the councils and of making himself dictator"; but, having satisfied himself that there was but little chance of succeeding, "he postpones his design" and falls back on the second course. "This is the only motive of his expedition into Egypt."1239—That, in the actual condition of France and of Europe, the expedition is opposed to public interests, that France deprives itself of its best army and offers its best fleet to almost certain destruction, is of little consequence provided, in this vast and gratuitous adventure, Bonaparte finds the employment he wants, a large field of action and famous victories which, like the blasts of a trumpet, will swell beyond the seas and renew his prestige: in his eyes, the fleet, the army, France, and humanity exist only for him and are created only for his service.—If, in confirmation of this persuasion, another lesson in things is still necessary, it will be furnished by Egypt. Here, absolute sovereign, free of any restraint, contending with an inferior order of humanity, he acts the sultan and accustoms himself to playing the part.1240His last scruples towards the human species disappear; "I became disgusted with Rousseau"; he is to say, later on, "After seeing the Orient: the savage man is a dog,"1241and, in the civilized man, the savage is just beneath the skin; if the intellect has become somewhat polished, there is no change in his instincts. A master is as necessary to one as to the other—a magician who subjugates his imagination, disciplines him, keeps him from biting without occasion, ties him up, cares for him, and takes him out hunting. He is born to obey, does not deserve any better lot, and has no other right.
Become consul and afterward emperor, he applies the theory on a grand scale, and, in his hands, experience daily furnishes fresh verifications of the theory. At his first nod the French prostrate themselves obediently, and there remain, as in a natural position; the lower class, the peasants and the soldiers, with animal fidelity, and the upper class, the dignitaries and the functionaries, with Byzantine servility.—The republicans, on their side, make no resistance; on the contrary, among these he has found his best governing instruments—senators, deputies, state councilors, judges, and administrators of every grade.1242He has at once detected behind their sermonizing on liberty and equality, their despotic instincts, their craving for command, for leadership, even as subordinates; and, in addition to this, with most of them, the appetite for money or for sensual pleasures. The difference between the delegate of the Committee of Public Safety and the minister, prefect, or subprefect under the Empire is small; it is the same person in two costumes: at first in the carmagnole, and later in the embroidered coat. If a rude, poor puritan, like Cambon or Baudot, refuses to don the official uniform, if two or three Jacobin generals, like Lecourbe and Delmas, grumble at the coronation parade, Napoleon, who knows their mental grasp, regards them as ignoramuses, limited to and rigid inside a fixed idea.—As to the cultivated and intelligent liberals of 1789, he consigns them with a word to the place where they belong; they are "ideologists"; in other words, their pretended knowledge is mere drawing-room prejudice and the imagination of the study. "Lafayette is a political ninny," the eternal "dupe of men and of things."1243With Lafayette and some others, one embarrassing detail remains namely:
* impartiality and generosity,
* constant care for the common good,
* respect for others,
* the authority of conscience,
* loyalty,
* and good faith.
In short, noble and pure motives.
Napoleon does not accept the denial thus given to his theory; when he talks with people, he questions their moral nobleness. "General Dumas,"1244said he, abruptly, to Mathieu Dumas, "you were one of the imbeciles who believed in liberty?" "Yes, sire, and I was and am still one of that class." "And you, like the rest, took part in the Revolution through ambition?" "No, sire, I should have calculated badly, for I am now precisely where I stood in 1790."
"You were not sufficiently aware of the motives which prompted you; you cannot be different from other people; it is all personal interest. Now, take Massena. He has glory and honors enough; but he is not content. He wants to be a prince, like Murat and like Bernadotte. He would risk being shot to-morrow to be a prince. That is the incentive of Frenchmen."—
His system is based on this. The most competent witnesses, and those who were most familiar with him certify to his fixed idea on this point.
"His opinions on men," writes M. de Metternich,1245"centered on one idea, which, unfortunately for him, had acquired in his mind the force of an axiom; he was persuaded that no man who was induced to appear on the public stage, or who was merely engaged in the active pursuits of life, governed himself, or was governed, otherwise than by his interest."
According to him, Man is held through his egoistic passions, fear, cupidity, sensuality, self-esteem, and emulation; these are the mainsprings when he is not under excitement, when he reasons. Moreover, it is not difficult to turn the brain of man; for he is imaginative, credulous, and subject to being carried away; stimulate his pride or vanity, provide him with an extreme and false opinion of himself and of his fellow-men, and you can start him off head downward wherever you please.1246—None of these motives is entitled to much respect, and beings thus fashioned form the natural material for an absolute government, the mass of clay awaiting the potter's hand to shape it. If parts of this mass are obdurate, the potter has only to crush and pound them and mix them thoroughly.
Such is the final conception on which Napoleon has anchored himself, and into which he sinks deeper and deeper, no matter how directly and violently he may be contradicted by palpable facts. Nothing will dislodge him; neither the stubborn energy of the English, nor the inflexible gentleness of the Pope, nor the declared insurrection of the Spaniards, nor the mute insurrection of the Germans, nor the resistance of Catholic consciences, nor the gradual disaffection of the French; the reason is, that his conception is imposed on him by his character;1247he sees man as he needs to see him.
His mastery of the will of others.—Degree of submissionrequired by him.—His mode of appreciating others and ofprofiting by them.—Tone of command and of conversation.
We at last confront his dominant passion, the inward abyss into which instinct, education, reflection, and theory have plunged him, and which is to engulf the proud edifice of his fortune—I mean, his ambition. It is the prime motor of his soul and the permanent substance of his will, so profound that he no longer distinguishes between it and himself, and of which he is sometimes unconscious.
"I," said he to Roederer,1248"I have no ambition," and then, recollecting himself, he adds, with his ordinary lucidity, "or, if I have any, it is so natural to me, so innate, so intimately associated with my existence, that it is like the blood which flows in my veins and the atmosphere I breathe."—
Still more profoundly, he likens it to that unconscious, savage, and irresistible emotion which vibrates the soul from one end to the other, to this universal thrill moving all living beings, animal or moral, to those keen and terrible tremors which we call the passion of love.
"I have but one passion,1249one mistress, and that is France. I sleep with her. She has never been false to me. She lavishes her blood and treasures on me. If I need 500,000 men, she gives them to me."
Let no one come between him and her. Let Joseph, in relation to the coronation, abstain from claiming his place, even secondary and prospective, in the new empire; let him not put forth his fraternal rights.1250"It is to wound me in the most tender spot." This he does, and, "Nothing can efface that from my souvenirs. It is as if he had told an impassioned lover that he had slept with his mistress, or merely that he hoped to succeed with her. My mistress is power. I have worked too hard to obtain her, to let her be ravished from me, or even suffer anybody to covet her." This ambition, as avid as it is jealous, which becomes exasperated at the very idea of a rival, feels hampered by the mere idea of setting a limit to it; however vast the acquired power, he would like to have it still more vast; on quitting the most copious banquet, he still remains insatiate. On the day after the coronation he said to Decrés:1251
"I come too late, there is no longer anything great to accomplish. I admit that my career is brilliant and that I have made my way successfully. But what a difference alongside of antiquity! Take Alexander! After having conquered Asia, and proclaimed himself to the people as the son of Jupiter, with the exception of Olympias, who knew what all this meant, and Aristotle, and a few Athenian pedants, the entire Orient believed him. Very well, should I now declare that I was the son of God Almighty, and proclaim that I am going to worship him under this title, every market woman would hoot at me as I walked along the streets. People nowadays know too much. Nothing is left to do."
And yet, even on this secluded, elevated domain, and which twenty centuries of civilization keeps inaccessible, he still encroaches, and to the utmost, in a roundabout way, by laying his hand on the Church, and next on the Pope; here, as elsewhere, he takes all he can get. Nothing in his eyes, is more natural; he has a right to it, because he is the only capable one.
"My Italian people1252must know me well enough not to forget that there is more in my little finger than in all their brains put together."
Alongside of him, they are children, "minors," the French also, and likewise the rest of mankind. A diplomat, who often saw him and studied him under all as aspects, sums up his character in one conclusive phrase:
"He considered himself an isolated being in this world, made to govern and direct all minds as he pleased."1253
Hence, whoever has anything to do with him, must abandon his independence and become his tool of government.
"That terrible man," often exclaimed Decrés1254"has subjugated us all! He holds all our imaginations in his hands, now of steel and now of velvet, but whether one or the other during the day nobody knows, and there is no way to escape from them whatever they seize on they never let go!"
Independence of any kind, even eventual and merely possible, puts him in a bad mood; intellectual or moral superiority is of this order, and he gradually gets rid of it;1255toward the end he no longer tolerates alongside of him any but subject or captive spirits. His principal servants are machines or fanatics, a devout worshipper, like Maret, a gendarme, like Savary,1256ready to do his bidding. From the outset, he has reduced his ministers to the condition of clerks; for he is administrator as well as ruler, and in each department he watches details as closely as the entire mass. Accordingly, he requires simply for head of departments active pen pushers, mute executors, docile and special hands, no need for honest and independent advisers.
"I should not know what to do with them," he said, "if they were not to a certain extent mediocre in mind and character."
As to his generals, he admits himself that "he likes to award fame only to those who cannot stand it." In any event, "he must be sole master in making or unmaking reputations," according to his personal requirements. Too brilliant a soldier would become too important; a subordinate should never be tempted to be less submissive. To this end he studies what he will omit in his bulletins, what alterations and what changes shall be made in them.
"It is convenient to keep silent about certain victories, or to convert the defeat of this or that marshal into a success. Sometimes a general learns by a bulletin of an action that he was never in and of a speech that he never made."
If he complains, he is notified to keep still, or by way of recompense he is allowed to pillage, levy contributions, and enrich himself. On becoming duke or hereditary prince, with half a million or a million of revenue from his estate, he is not less held in subjection, for the creator has taken precautions against his own creations.
"There are men,"1257he said, "who I have made independent, but I know well where to find them and keep them from being ungrateful."
In effect, if he has endowed them magnificently it is with domains assigned to them in conquered countries, which insures their fortune being his fortune. Besides, in order that they may not enjoy any pecuniary stability, he expressly encourages them and all his grand dignitaries to make extravagant outlays; thus, through their financial embarrassments be holds them in a leash. "We have seen most of his marshals, constantly pressed by their creditors, come to him for assistance, which he has given as he fancied, or as he found it for his interest to attach some one to him."1258
Thus, beyond the universal ascendancy which his power and genius have conferred on him, he craves a personal, supplementary, and irresistible hold on everybody. Consequently,1259"he carefully cultivates all the bad passions.... he is glad to find the bad side in a man, so as to get him in his power"; the thirst for money in Savary, the Jacobin defects of Fouché, the vanity and sensuality of Cambacérès, the careless cynicism and "the easy immorality" of Talleyrand, the "dry bluntness" of Duroc, the courtier-like insipidity of Maret, "the silliness" of Berthier; he brings this out, diverts himself with it, and profits by it. "Where he sees no vice, he encourages weaknesses, and, in default of anything better, he provokes fear, so that he may be ever and continually the strongest.. ..He dreads ties of affection, and strives to alienate people from each other.... He sells his favors only by arousing anxiety; he thinks that the best way to attach individuals to him is to compromise them, and often, even, to ruin them in public opinion."—"If Caulaincourt is compromised," said he, after the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, "it is no great matter, he will serve me all the better."
Once that the creature is in his clutches, let him not imagine that he can escape or withhold anything of his own accord; all that he has belongs to him. Zeal and success in the performance of duty, punctual obedience within limits previously designated, is not enough; behind the functionary he claims the man. "All that may well be," he replies, to whatever may be said in praise of him,1260"but he does not belong to me as I would like." It is devotion which he exacts, and, by devotion, he means the irrevocable and complete surrender "of the entire person, in all his sentiments and opinions." According to him, writes a witness, "one must abandon every old habit, even the most trifling, and be governed by one thought alone, that of his will and interests."1261For greater security, his servitors ought to extinguish in themselves the critical sense. "What he fears the most is that, close to him or far off, the faculty of judging should be applied or even preserved."
"His idea is a marble groove," out of which no mind should diverge.1262Especially as no two minds could think of diverging at the same time, and on the same side, their concurrence, even when passive, their common understanding, even if kept to themselves, their whispers, almost inaudible, constitute a league, a faction, and, if they are functionaries, "a conspiracy." On his return from Spain he declares, with a terrible explosion of wrath and threats,1263"that the ministers and high dignitaries whom he has created must stop expressing their opinions and thoughts freely, that they cannot be otherwise than his organs, that treason has already begun when they begin to doubt, and that it is under full headway when, from doubt, they proceed to dissent." If, against his constant encroachments, they strive to preserve a last refuge, if they refuse to abandon their conscience to him, their faith as Catholics or their honor as honest men, he is surprised and gets irritated. In reply to the Bishop of Ghent, who, in the most respectful manner, excuses himself for not taking a second oath that is against his conscience, he rudely turns his back, and says, "Very well, sir, your conscience is a blockhead!"1264Portalis, director of the publishing office,1265having received a papal brief from his cousin, the Abbé d'Astros, respected a confidential communication; he simply recommended his cousin to keep this document secret, and declared that, if it were made public, he would prohibit its circulation; by way of extra precaution he notified the prefect of police. But he did not specially denounce his cousin, have the man arrested and the document seized. On the strength of this, the Emperor, in full council of state, apostrophizes him to his face, and, "with one of those looks which go straight through one,"1266declares that he has committed "the vilest of perfidies"; he bestows on him for half an hour a hailstorm of reproaches and insults, and then orders him out of the room as if a lackey who had been guilty of a theft. Whether he keeps within his function or not, the functionary must be content to do whatever is demanded of him, and readily anticipate every commission. If his scruples arrest him, if he alleges personal obligations, if he had rather not fail in delicacy, or even in common loyalty, he incurs the risk of offending or losing the favor of the master, which is the case with M. de Rémusat,1267who is unwilling to become his spy, reporter, and denunciator for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, who does not offer, at Vienna, to pump out of Madame d'André the address of her husband so that M. d'André may be taken and immediately shot. Savary, who was the negotiator for his being given up, kept constantly telling M. de Rémusat, "You are going against your interest—I must say that I do not comprehend you!" And yet Savary, himself minister of the police, executor of most important services, head manager of the murder of the Duc d'Enghien and of the ambuscade at Bayonne, counterfeiter of Austrian bank-notes for the campaign of 1809 and of Russian banknotes for that of 1812,1268Savary ends in getting weary; he is charged with too many dirty jobs; however hardened his conscience it has a tender spot; he discovers at last that he has scruples. It is with great repugnance that, in February, 1814, he executes the order to have a small infernal machine prepared, moving by clock-work, so as to blow up the Bourbons on their return into France.1269"Ah," said he, giving himself a blow on the forehead, "it must be admitted that the Emperor is sometimes hard to serve!"
If he exacts so much from the human creature, it is because, in playing the game he has to play, he must absorb everything; in the situation in which he has placed himself, caution is unnecessary. "Is a statesman," said he, "made to have feeling? Is he not wholly an eccentric personage, always alone by himself, he on one side and the world on the other?"1270
In this duel without truce or mercy, people interest him only whilst they are useful to him; their value depends on what he can make out of them; his sole business is to squeeze them, to extract to the last drop whatever is available in them.
"I find very little satisfaction in useless sentiments," said he again,1271"and Berthier is so mediocre that I do not know why I waste my time on him. And yet when I am not set against him, I am not sure that I do not like him."
He goes no further. According to him, this indifference is necessary in a statesman. The glass he looks through is that of his own policy;1272he must take care that it does not magnify or diminish objects.—Therefore, outside of explosions of nervous sensibility, "he has no consideration for men other than that of a foreman for his workmen,"1273or, more precisely, for his tools; once the tool is worn out, little does he care whether it rusts away in a corner or is cast aside on a heap of scrap-iron. "Portalis, Minister of Justice,1274enters his room one day with a downcast look and his eyes filled with tears. 'What's the matter with you, Portalis?' inquired Napoleon, 'are you ill? 'No, sire, but very wretched. The poor Archbishop of Tours, my old schoolmate...' 'Eh, well, what has happened to him?' 'Alas, sire, he has just died.' 'What do I care? he was no longer good for anything.'" Owning and making the most of men and of things, of bodies and of souls, using and abusing them at discretion, even to exhaustion, without being responsible to any one, he reaches that point after a few years where he can say as glibly and more despotically than Louis XIV. himself,
"My armies, my fleets, my cardinals, my councils, my senate, my populations, my empire."1275
Addressing army corps about to rush into battle:
"Soldiers, I need your lives, and you owe them to me."
He says to General Dorsenne and to the grenadiers of the guard:1276
"I hear that you complain that you want to return to Paris, to your mistresses. Undeceive yourselves. I shall keep you under arms until you are eighty. You were born to the bivouac, and you shall die there."
How he treats his brothers and relations who have become kings; how he reins them in; how he applies the spur and the whip and makes them trot and jump fences and ditches, may be found in his correspondence; every stray impulse to take the lead, even when justified by an unforeseen urgency and with the most evident good intention, is suppressed as a deviation, is arrested with a brusque roughness which strains the loins and weakens the knees of the delinquent. The amiable Prince Eugene, so obedient and so loyal,1277is thus warned:
"If you want orders or advice from His Majesty in the alteration of the ceiling of your room you should wait till you get them; were Milan burning and you asked orders for putting out the fire, you should let Milan burn until you got them... His Majesty is displeased, and very much displeased, with you; you must never attempt to do his work. Never does he like this, and he will never forgive it."
This enables us to judge of his tone with subalterns. The French battalions are refused admission into certain places in Holland:1278
"Announce to the King of Holland, that if his ministers have acted on their own responsibility, I will have them arrested and all their heads cut off."
He says to M. de Ségur, member of the Academy commission which had just approved M. de Chateaubriand's discourse:1279
"You, and M. de Fontaines, as state councillor and grand master, I ought to put in Vincennes.... Tell the second class of the Institute that I will have no political subjects treated at its meetings.....If it disobeys, I will break it up like a bad club.
Even when not angry or scolding,1280when the claws are drawn in, one feels the clutch. He says to Beugnot, whom he has just berated, scandalously and unjustly,—conscious of having done him injustice and with a view to produce an effect on the bystanders,—
"Well, you great imbecile, you have got back your brains?"
On this, Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, while the smaller man, raising his hand, seizes him by the ear, "a heady mark of favor," says Beugnot, a sign of familiarity and of returning good humor. And better yet, the master deigns to lecture Beugnot on his personal tastes, on his regrets, on his wish to return to France: What would he like? To be his minister in Paris? "Judging by what he saw of me the other day I should not be there very long; I might die of worry before the end of the month." He has already killed Portalis, Cretet, and almost Treilhard, even though he had led a hard life: he could no longer urinate, nor the others either. The same thing would have happened to Beignot, if not worse....
"Stay here.... after which you will be old, or rather we all shall be old, and I will send you to the Senate to drivel at your ease."
Evidently,1281the nearer one is to his person the more disagreeable life becomes.1282"Admirably served, promptly obeyed to the minute, he still delights in keeping everybody around him in terror concerning the details of all that goes on in his palace." Has any difficult task been accomplished? He expresses no thanks, never or scarcely ever praises, and, which happens but once, in the case of M. de Champagny, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is praised for having finished the treaty of Vienna in one night, and with unexpected advantages;1283this time, the Emperor has thought aloud, is taken by surprise; "ordinarily, he manifests approbation only by his silence."—When M. de Rémusat, prefect of the palace, has arranged "one of those magnificent fêtes in which all the arts minister to his enjoyment," economically, correctly, with splendor and success, his wife never asks her husband1284if the Emperor is satisfied, but whether he has scolded more or less.
"His leading general principle, which he applies in every way, in great things as well as in small ones, is that a man's zeal depends upon his anxiety."
How insupportable the constraint he exercises, with what crushing weight his absolutism bears down on the most tried devotion and on the most pliable characters, with what excess he tramples on and wounds the best dispositions, up to what point he represses and stifles the respiration of the human being, he knows as well as anybody. He was heard to say,
"The lucky man is he who hides away from me in the depths of some province."
And, another day, having asked M. de Ségur what people would say of him after his death, the latter enlarged on the regrets which would be universally expressed. "Not at all," replied the Emperor; and then, drawing in his breath in a significant manner indicative of universal relief, he replied,
"They'll say, 'Whew!'"1285