Thereupon the Canon looked him in the eyes and told him:
"My son, I understand men. I can divine your nature; you are no sceptic. Take up this case, the Blessed Father Bonaventura's case. He will repay you the services you may render him. For myself, I am over old to witness the success of this noble enterprise. I must die soon; but knowing it to be in your hands, I shall die happy. Above all, never forget, my kinsman, that all power comes of God by the instrumentality of his priests."
He rose to his feet, raised his arms to bless his young kinsman and withdrew.
Left alone, Bonaparte turned over the leaves of the ponderous Memorial by the smoky light of his candle, as he pondered over the power of the Church, and told himself the Papacy was a more enduring institution than ever the Constitution of the Year III was likely to be.
A knock was heard at the door. It was Berthier, come to inform the General that all was ready for their departure.
[1] "When, a plain citizen, soldier of a free people, by the banks of the Eridanus, the Adige and the Tiber, blasting with his lightnings one after another recalcitrant tyrants, his hand brake the fetters of the nations that wept...."
[2] "Napoleon, visiting Florence after his Leghorn expedition, lay one night at San Miniato at the house of an old Abbé Buonaparte...." (Memorial of St. Helena, by the Count de Las Cases—reprint of 1823, 1824, Vol. I, p. 149.)
[3] "I stayed for the night at San Miniato. I had a relative living there, an old Canon...." (Memoirs of Dr. F. Antommarchi on the Last Moments of Napoleon, 1825, vol. I, p. 155.)