The man hesitated.
“You think him too magnificently caparisoned and too fine an animal,” said Napoleon. “Nothing is too good for a French soldier.”
“Pavia,” said Napoleon, “is the only place I ever gave up to pillage. I promised that the soldiers should have it at their mercy for twenty-four hours; but after three hours I could bear such scenes of outrage no longer, and put an end to them. Policy and morality are equally opposed to the system. Nothing is so certain to disorganize and completely ruin an army.”
“I have,” said Napoleon, “a taste for founding, not for possessing. My riches consist in glory and celebrity. The Simplon and the Louvre were, in the eyes of the people and of foreigners, more my property than any private domains could possibly have been.”
To General Clark, on the death of his nephew, at Arcola, Napoleon wrote: “Your nephew, Elliott, has been slain upon the battlefield. That young man has several times marched at the head of our columns. He has died gloriously, and in the face of the enemy. He did not have a moment’s suffering. Where is the reasonable man who would not envy such a death? Where is he who, in the vicissitudes of life would not give himself up to leave in this manner a world so often ungrateful?”
Napoleon had no tendencies to gallantry. Madame de Stäel once said to him: “It is reported that you are not very partial to the ladies.” “I am very fond of my wife, Madame,” was the laconic reply.