Qu'ils se font trop attendre, et qu'Attila s'ennuie[468].

A certain silence covers the actions of Washington; he acts slowly; it is as though he felt that he was entrusted with the liberty of the future and feared to compromise it. It is not his own destiny that a hero of this kind carries in his hand: it is that of his country; he does not suffer himself to stake that which does not belong to him; but from this profound humility see how great a light arises! Seek the woods in which flashed Washington's sword: what do you find? Tombstones? No: a world! Washington left the United States as a trophy on his battle-field.

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Washington and Bonaparte.

Bonaparte has none of the features of this grave American: he fights noisily upon an old world; he seeks to create nothing but his fame; he entrusts himself with nothing but his own lot. He seems to know that his mission will be short, that the torrent which descends from so great a height will soon flow away; he hastens to enjoy and to misuse his glory, as though it were a fleeting season of youth. Like Homer's gods, he wishes to reach the end of the world in four steps. He appears on every shore; precipitously he inscribes his name upon the annals of every nation; he tosses crowns to his family and his soldiers; he makes haste with his monuments, his laws, his victories. Bending over the world, with one hand he fells the kings to the ground, while with the other he lays low the revolutionary giant; but in crushing anarchy, he stifles liberty, and ends by losing his own upon his last field of battle.

Each is rewarded according to his works: Washington raises a nation to independence; a peaceful magistrate, he falls asleep beneath his roof-tree amid the regrets of his fellow-countrymen and the veneration of the nations. Bonaparte robs a nation of its independence: a fallen emperor, he is hurled into exile, where the affrighted earth does not think him sufficiently closely imprisoned, even when guarded by the ocean. He dies: the news, posted on the gate of the palace before which the conqueror has caused so many funerals to be proclaimed, does not delay nor astonish the passer-by: what had the citizens to mourn for?

Washington's republic is in existence; Bonaparte's empire is destroyed. Washington and Bonaparte issued from the bosom of democracy: both were born of liberty; the first was faithful to her, the second betrayed her.

Washington was the representative of the needs, the ideas, the judgment, the opinions of his day; he seconded, rather than opposed, the changes in men's minds; he desired what he was bound to desire, the very thing for which he had been called: hence the coherent and perpetual character of his work. This man who strikes the imagination little, because he is in proportion, merged his existence in that of his country: his glory is civilization's inheritance; his fame towers like one of those public sanctuaries from which flows a fertile and inexhaustible spring.

Bonaparte had it equally in his power to enrich the commonwealth; he worked upon the most intelligent, the most gallant, the most brilliant nation on earth. How high would be the rank held by him today, if he had added magnanimity to the heroism which was his, if, Washington and Bonaparte in one, he had appointed liberty the universal legatee of his glory! But this giant did not link his destinies with those of his contemporaries; his genius belonged to modern times: his ambition was of a by-gone age; he did not perceive that the miracles of his life surpassed a diadem in value, and that that Gothic ornament would become him badly. Now he flung himself into the future, again he drew back towards the past; and according to whether he reascended or followed the course of time, thanks to his prodigious force, he drew with him or pushed back the waves. Men, in his eyes, were but a means of power; no sympathy was established between their happiness and his; he had promised to deliver them, and he enchained them; he isolated himself from them, and they withdrew from him. The Kings of Egypt placed their funeral pyramids, not among thriving pastures, but in the midst of barren deserts; those great tombs rise like eternity in the solitude: Bonaparte built the monument of his fame in their image,

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