"To march against the enemy; to avenge Waterloo; to save France! Come, sire, come!"
A year later, his feet on the window-sill at Longwood, a book in his hand as at Malmaison, he said:
"History will reproach me for letting myself be taken too easily. I confess there was some spite in my decision. When at Malmaison I offered the Provisional Government to place myself at the head of the army in order to take advantage of the imprudence of the Allies and to annihilate them under the walls of Paris: before the end of the day, twenty-five thousand Prussians would have laid down their arms. But they did not want me. I sent the leaders away, and I left the place myself. I was wrong: my good countrymen have the right to reproach me for it. I ought to have mounted on horseback when Braye's division appeared before Malmaison; allowed myself to be taken back by it to the army; fought the enemy and taken command of affairs, rallying round me the people of the faubourgs of Paris. That twenty-four hours' crisis would have saved France a second Restoration.
"I should have destroyed the effect of Waterloo by a great victory, and I should have been able to make terms for my son, if the Allies had insisted on setting me aside."
Therein, sire, you were mistaken. No, your good countrymen had nothing to reproach you with. No, you were not wrong to leave. No, we needed the second Restoration, the Revolution of 1830 and that of 1848; we needed the Republic; degenerate though it is, it will be godmother to all the other European republics. And you needed the hospitality of the Bellérophon, the voyage in the Northumberland, the exile to St. Helena; you needed the persecutions at Longwood; you needed Hudson-Lowe; your long agony was as necessary to you as the crown of thorns and Pilate and Calvary were to Christ.
You would not have been so god-like had you not suffered your passion.
[CHAPTER VIII]
Cæsar—Charlemagne—Napoleon.