none," I replied. "I was feeling very ill it tary claims to the empire not yet conwas quite possible I might never see you ferred upon their head himself! again; but you were young, you had impressed me very strongly, and I felt impelled to render you a service without any after-thought what"In that case," said Bonaparte, "and if it was really done without any design, you played the part of a dupe."

soever."

Bonaparte seemed to love the child; he had placed future hopes on his head. That was reason enough for the Bonaparte brotherhood to hate him, as the innocent obstacle to their No sooner had the first future greatness. consul dropped hints of his project of adoption, than his whole family manifested an extreme inquietude. Joseph Bonaparte represented that he had in no way deserved to be dispossessed of his rights as elder brother to the succession of an empire as yet in embryo. Bonaparte, whom contradiction always irrimined than ever to carry his plan into effect. tated, got in a rage, and seemed more deter

One day the consul, surrounded by his family, and holding the young Napoleon on his knees, addressed him as follows, still playing with him, and caressing him: "Do you know, little urchin, that you run the risk of being a "Et Achille?" king one of these days?" interposed Murat, who was present, mindful "Ah! Achille," reof his own son and heir. This reply deeply wounded his sister, Madame plied Bonaparte, "Achille sera un bon soldat." Murat; but Napoleon, not seeming to see this, and piqued by the opposition of the brotherhood to his project, which he believed with reason to have been excited above all by her, continued to address the little Napoleon as follows: "In any case, my poor child, if you wish for a long life, I advise you not to accept the repasts your cousins will offer you!"

One of the earliest records of his childhood shows Napoleon already cast loose from that law of truth which at once displays and determines character: for, though sometimes the merely passing fruit of cowardice, its deliberate and habitual breach is the sure sign of that selfish disregard of all other laws, that assumed right to be "a law to himself," which severs a man from the confidence and esteem of his fellows, and ruins him in his own. It was prophesied by one of his uncles, that the little Napoleon would govern the world, because he always lied (a sign, by the bye, of that family disregard for truth which was shown also by his brothers and sisters); and the habit, which was probably -as we too often see in children an innate germ of lawlessness, became the deliberately chosen instrument of that politique—the "sacramental word," which was his only law. He despised and distrusted all sincerity in others, and scrupled not to say that he recognized a man's superiority by the The poor child was doomed to a differgreater or lesser skill shown in his man-ent but speedy end of these bright hopes, ner of lying. "M. de Metternich," he dying of the croup on the 5th of May, said, "is almost a statesman; he lies very 1807. While his mother was prostrated well." The second head of the analysis of Nations of her jealous husband; while Josewith a grief embittered by the persecupoleon's character is thus emphatically disposed of:

According to the order I have laid down, I ought now to speak of Bonaparte's heart; but if it were possible to believe that a being, in every other way similar to ourselves, could exist without that portion of our organization which makes us desire to love and to be loved, I should say that in his case the heart was left

out. Perhaps, however, the truth was, that he succeeded in suppressing it completely. He was always too much engrossed by himself to be influenced by any sentiment of affection, no matter of what kind. He almost ignored the ties of blood and the rights of nature.

phine sorrowed deeply over the grandson,

who alone stood between her and the
divorce already impending; while the
court orator, M. de Fontanes, wound up
a discourse on the dedication of the spoils
of recent victories at Notre Dame, with
rounded with the pomp of victory, but
"the hero sur-
a peroration depicting
turning away from it (la dédaignant) to
weep over an infant," the memoirs tell
the real behavior of Napoleon when the
news reached him at Berlin.

But the hero did not weep at all. He was at first touched by the child's death with a Of this insensibility he gave a striking feeling of pain, which he tried to shake off as example on the death of the young Napo- soon as possible. M. de Talleyrand afterleon, the eldest son of his brother Louis wards told me that, on the day after he had and Hortense Beauharnais. This child, received the news, the emperor was conversing born on the 10th of October, 1802, seemed with perfect freedom; and, as he was on the for a time destined to be his heir; and the court of Warsaw, who came to offer him point of giving an audience to the nobles of the intention called forth the ludicrous condolence at the loss, he (M. de Talleyrand) spectacle of the whole parvenu race of felt obliged to put on an aspect of sadness, and Bonapartes up in arms for their heredi-even ventured to reproach his excess of in

difference, whereupon the emperor replied, qu'il n'avait pas le temps de S'AMUSER à sentir et à regretter, comme les autres hommes.

Those words "not like other men" - are, in fact, the keynote to the whole character and career of this extraordinary and almost unique man, whom a self-contained temperament and faith in his future destiny separated, even in his early years, not only from fellowship with the men upon whom he looked down as made for him, but from the laws which he shook off as not made for him, in a moral as well as social isolation which ensured his final fate.

"I AM NOT A MAN LIKE ANY OTHER, and the laws of morality or decorum (convenance) could not have been made for me," - was the brutal boast with which he silenced his wife's feeble remonstrances at his conjugal infidelities. "It is your place," he said," to submit to all my fancies, and you ought to think it quite natural that I should allow my self such distractions. I have a right to answer all your complaints by AN ETERNAL I. I am apart from all the world; I accept conditions from no one." In the superabundance of other matter we gladly abstain from saying more about his constant and profligate "distractions" beyond this: that all but the worst that has been said of Napoleon in this respect is confirmed by the revelations made by Madame de Rémusat with the skill of a

and his reason for this agreed with that which she herself gives:

A sensitive person forgets self in love, and becomes almost transformed, but to a man of the stamp of Bonaparte it only meant an additional object of despotism. The emperor despised women, and contempt cannot exist together with love. He regarded their weakority, and the power they have acquired in ness as an unanswerable proof of their inferisociety as an intolerable usurpation-a result and an abuse of the progress of that civilization which, as M. de Talleyrand said, was always his personal enemy. On this account Bonaparte was under restraint in the society of women; and as every kind of restraint put him out of humor, he was awkward in their presence, and never knew how to talk to them.

Indeed the whole social bearing of Naabsence of graceful ease. poleon was marked by constraint and an seductive power in his smile, but he rarely There was a put it on.

Gravity was the basis of his character; not such as springs from habitual dignity and meditations. In his youth he was a dreamer; nòbleness, but caused by the depth of his later he became sombre (triste); and, later still, all was transformed into almost constant illhumor.... Bonaparte was deficient in edu cation and in manners; it seemed as if he must have been destined either to live in a tent where all men are equal, or upon a throne where everything is permitted. He did not know how either to enter or to leave a room; he did not know how to make a bow, how to

rise, or how to sit down. His questions were abrupt, and so also was his manner of speech. Spoken by him, Italian loses all its grace and sweetness. Whatever language he speaks, it always sounds like a foreign tongue; he appears to force it to express his thoughts. And, as any rigid rule becomes an insupportable annoyance to him, and every liberty which he takes pleases him as though it were a victory, he would never yield to grammar.

Frenchwoman of the old time, who could speak plainly without grossness: Perhaps as her grandson keenly observes the present age is too much used to license in fiction to tolerate needful latitude in serious history; and we gladly keep silence even from good words about bad things, which might offend minds perhaps too sensitive to be pure. One specially unamiable feature in this part of This impatience was shown even in his Napoleon's conduct was that "he was dress, which his valets had to watch for harsh, violent, and without pity for his an opportunity to adjust, even on days of wife, whenever he had a mistress;" but ceremonial. Madame de Rémusat believed that "Bonaparte had some affection for his first wife, and if he was ever really stirred by any emotion, it was by her and for her." For the rest, he "was never awakened to love except by vanity." "Love is not made for me," he once said to the author,

The charges implied in this qualification, which were constantly set afloat by the mutual jealousies of the Bonapartes, and uttered by Josephine in moments of vehement passion, receive no countenance from our author; but their free circulation is a most striking evidence of the atmosphere of profligacy that enveloped Napoleon's family and court.

He could not wear any ornament properly; able to him. the least constraint always seemed insupportHe tore or broke whatever

caused him the least discomfort, and sometimes the poor valet, who had roused this passing irritation, received a violent and positive proof of his anger.

It was the same with the least obstacle as with the greatest-a button on his Coat or an innocent prince of the blood of Condé- "P'écarte ce qui me gêne". was the account he rendered to his court for the murder of the Duc d'Enghien.

It was to her being a good and highly In fact, I believe I should have obeyed very intelligent listener, that Madame de Ré- badly. I recollect, at the time of the Treaty musat owed those remarkable confiden- of Campo Formio, M. de Cobenzel and I met, ces, which make her picture of Napoleon in order to conclude it, in a room where, acthe reflection of a well-drawn portrait. been erected and the throne of the emperor of cording to an Austrian custom, a dais had Among these revelations from his own Austria was represented. On entering the conversations, or rather monologues, some room I asked what that meant, and afterwards of the most striking were made to the au- I said to the Austrian minister, "Now, before thor, when she went (in 1803) to attend we begin, have that armchair removed, for I her sick husband in the camp formed at can never see one seat higher than the others Boulogne for the invasion of England. without instantly wanting to place myself in Fearing -as was the habit of his cour-it." You see I had an instinct of what was to tiers, whom he purposely kept in constant happen to me some day. fear how the first consul would take her unbidden visit, she was received with a kindness which made her burst into tears. "I must watch over a woman of your age, thus cast into the midst of so many soldiers," he said, while inviting her to share his table; where, in the frequent absence of any other guest, "he talked about a multitude of things. He opened his mind on his own character; he depicted himself as having been always melancholy beyond all comparison with his comrades every class."

of

In his earliest youth at school, we already see him aspiring to be the man "apart from all the world," with no law but his own will; and to the lovers of "hero-worship we commend the climax (not to say the reductio ad absurdum) of the young Napoleon making himself his own hero, and prophetically calling on

France and the world to bow down to him, as above all laws human and divine. Here is his own description of his meditations at the military school at Brienne:

I showed no aptitude for anything but the exact sciences. Every one said of me, "That child will never be good for anything but geometry.' I kept aloof from my schoolfellows. I had chosen a little corner in the school-grounds, where I would sit and dream at my ease; for I have always liked reverie. When my companions tried to usurp possession of this corner, I defended it with all my might. I already knew by instinct that my will was to override that of others, and that what pleased me was to belong to me.

We cannot stay to reflect on the system of school-training which-in place of the one most precious lesson of obedience left the boy to sow in his own heart the seed of that unbounded egotism, which not only bore its fruit through his whole life, but was always consistently avowed. Once, for example, he said to M. de Rémusat, in a moment of good-humored frankness:

As the moral character of the young l Napoleon was thus developed from his in all but the exact sciences, was directed own self-will, so his intellectual culture, by imagination more than by reason.

I entered the service, and soon grew tired of garrison work. I began to read novels and they interested me deeply. I even tried to write some. This occupation created in me a vagueness of imagination, it mingled with the Positive knowledge I had acquired; and I often amused myself with dreaming, in order the compass of my reason. that I might afterwards measure my dreams by I threw myself into an ideal world, and I endeavored to find out in what precise points it differed from the actual world in which I lived. . . . History I did not so much study, as make a conquest of it; that is to say, I chose and retained only so much of it as could give me a new idea, despising what was useless, and mastering such results as pleased me.

It is

For exam

Ah, good taste! That is another of those classical words which I do not adopt. perhaps my own fault, but there are certain rules which mean nothing to me. ple, what is called "style," good or bad, does not affect me. I care only for the force of thought. I used to like "Ossian," but it was for the same reason which made me delight in the murmur of the winds and waves. Egypt I tried to read the Iliad; but I got tired

of it.

In

M. Paul de Rémusat tells us that Talleyrand once said to the emperor, "Good taste is your personal enemy. If you could have got rid of it by a cannonade, it would long since have ceased to exist."

the

13

T23

I did not understand much about the Revolution, but I approved of it. I was captivated by the equality which was to elevate myself.

The choice of his part in public life | sity for the salvation of his country and was determined by the one motive of am- of society. The state of France gave bitious egotism. He had never shared in him the opportunity for executing his the aspirations and illusions of 1789. long-cherished schemes of ambition and self-interest. It was his own boast, that the animosities which were irreconcilable with each other found a common point of reconciliation in him, for he knew how to use them for his own advantage. Speaking to Madame de Rémusat of the bitterness of political hatred, and the distorting glass (lunette à facettes) of party passions, he said:

Equality [says Madame de Rémusat], nothing but equality, was his rallying cry between the Revolution and himself. He did not fear its consequences for himself; he knew that he was stimulating those vain sentiments (ces vanités) which have power to mislead the most generous dispositions; he turned liberty aside, as I have often said. That which places Bonaparte above all the powerful men who have been called to rule their fellows, is that he perfectly understood his age, and that he always fought against it. He did not conceal this; he often said that he alone had stopped the Revolution, that after him it would resume its course.* He allied himself with it to crush it, but he presumed too much on his strength. Skilled in recovering its advantage, it found the way at last to conquer and repulse him.

The memoirs abound with interesting variations on this keynote. In the eyes of the French people it was his policy to represent himself as the impersonation of its principles, and to strike terror into his Royalist enemies by saying, "I am the Revolution, and we will show them of what it is capable;" while with the sovereigns amongst whom he aspired to rank, he claimed the credit of having "finished the Revolution happily and abolished republics." His whole relations to the movement out of which he rose are summed up by Madame de Ré

musat:

Bonaparte frequently declared that he alone was the whole Revolution, and he at length persuaded himself that in his own person he preserved all of it which it would not be well to destroy.

When Napoleon had fully won his place among the crowned heads of Europe, and genealogists tried to flatter him with an ancient pedigree, he announced in the Moniteur, "Researches of this kind are purposeless. To all who may ask from what period the house of Bonaparte dates, there is a ready answer: It dates from the 18th Brumaire;" that is, from the coup d'état of Nov. 9th, 1799. He at least did not plead the apology by which the advocates of Cæsarism represent the military usurper as the self-sacrificing instrument of an imperious neces

After all, this mode of looking at things has its advantage, and we make our profit of it; for we too have our glasses, and if it is not through our passions that we view things, it is at least through the medium of our interests.

The epoch at which Madame de Rémusat began her close personal observation of Napoleon, in 1802, was precisely that at which the despotic power of the first consul had become fully confirmed, his court was formed upon a regal model, and he was only waiting the fittest moment to assume the long-coveted imperial crown. His military supremacy had been established by the victory of Marengo and his second complete triumph over Austria in Italy; and the Peace of Amiens *seemed to give France a breathingtime for the formation of a permanent The hopes excited by Bonaparte's bril government under so powerful a head. liant successes and vast ability were shared by the moderate politicians of whom the Rémusats are the type.

M.

Political ideas rarely enter into the head of a woman at twenty-two. I was therefore at that did not reason on the greater or less right which time quite without any kind of party spirit. I Bonaparte had to the power, of which I heard every one say that he made a good use. de Rémusat, who believed in him, as did nearly the whole of France, was full of the hopes that at that time seemed to be well founded. All classes, outraged and disgusted by the horrors of the Revolution, and grateful to the consular bin reaction, looked upon its coming into government which preserved us from the Jacopower as a new era for the country. periments in liberty that had been repeatedly made had inspired a natural, though scarcely rational, aversion to it; for, in truth, liberty had always disappeared when its name was abused to vary only the forms of tyranny.

The ex

Ma