“Why?” asked Napoleon, “Words falling from the lips of beautiful women are never insulting, and I do not punish thoughts which have not yet become actions. Your hands are free from guilt, and the only criminal here in this room is that dagger on the floor. I trample it under foot, and it is unable to rise any more against me.”
He placed his foot on the flashing blade, and fixed his piercing eyes on the princess. “Madame,” he said, “when you came to me in Paris, it was the Count de Provence who had sent you. He sent me a letter through you at that time. Tell me, did he send me this dagger to-day?”
“No, I will take the most solemn oath that he knows nothing about it,” replied Marianne. “Nobody knew of my undertaking; I had no confidants and no accomplices.”
“You had only your own hatred, madame,” said Napoleon, musingly. “Why do you hate me so bitterly? What have I done to all of you that you should turn away from me?”
“Why I hate you?” asked Marianne, impetuously. “Because you have come to trample Germany in the dust, to transform her into a French province, and to defraud us of our honor, our good rights, and independence. What have you done, that all honest men should turn away from you? You have broken your most sacred oaths—you are a perjurer!”
“Oh, that goes too far,” cried Napoleon, passionately. “What hinders me, then—”
“To have me arrested?” Marianne interrupted him, defiantly—“please do so.”
“No, I shall not do you that favor. Proceed, proceed! You stand before me as though you were Germania herself rising before me to accuse me. Well, then, accuse me. When have I broken my oaths?”
“From the moment when you raised the banner in the name of the republic which you intended to upset; from the moment when you called the nations to you in the name of liberty, in order to rule over them as their tyrant and oppressor!”
“To those who wanted to keep up the despotism of liberty under which France had bled and groaned so long, I was a tyrant,” said Napoleon, calmly; “to those who entertained the senseless idea of restoring the Bourbons, under whom France had bled and groaned as long and longer, I was an oppressor. The family of the Bourbons has become decrepit; it resembles a squeezed lemon, the peel of which is thrown contemptuously aside, because there is no longer any juice in it. Did you really believe I should have been such a fool as to pick up this empty peel, which France had thrown aside, and to clothe it in a purple cloak and crown? Did you believe I had, like those Bourbons and all legitimate princes, learned nothing from history, and not been taught by the examples it holds up to all those who have eyes to see with? I have learned from history that dynasties dry up like trees, and that it is better to uproot the hollow, withered-up trunk rather than permit it, in its long decay, to suck up the last nourishing strength from the soil on which it stands.”