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,1249 one 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 people1252 must 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;1255 toward 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,1256 ready 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,"1257 he 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."1261 For 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.1262 Especially 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!"1264 Portalis, director of the publishing office,1265 having 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,"1266 declares 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,1267 who 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 1812,1268 Savary 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;1272 he 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,"1273 or, 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,1274 enters 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,1277 is 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,1280 when 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,1281 the 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;1283 this 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 husband1284 if 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