"'And I have since learnt, my dear fellow, that he was rather in my favour; I have been told that he spoke of me with some admiration; such is retributive justice here below!'

"And the last words were spoken with so much feeling, all the features of his face displayed such harmony with the words that, if he whom Napoleon was pitying had at that moment been in his power, I am quite sure that, whatever his intentions or his acts, he would have been eagerly pardoned.... The Emperor used to consider this matter from two very different points of view: that of common law, or the established rules of justice, and that of the law of nature, or acts of violence...."

By the Comte de Las Cases.

"To us, in the intimacy of private conversation, the Emperor would say that the blame in France might be ascribed to an excess of zeal in those around him, or to private objects or mysterious intrigues. He said that he had been precipitately urged in this affair; that they had as it were taken his mind unawares, hastened his measures, anticipated their result....

"'Without doubt,' he said, 'if I had been informed in time of certain particulars concerning the Prince's opinions and disposition; more still, if I had seen the letter which he wrote to me and which, God knows for what reason, was not handed to me until after he was no more, I should most certainly have pardoned him.'

"It was easy for us to see that it was the Emperor's heart and nature alone which dictated these words, and that they were intended only for us; for he would have felt humiliated to think that any one could for an instant believe that he was trying to shift the burden from his own shoulders, or condescending to justify himself; his fear in this respect, or his susceptibility, was such that, in speaking of it to strangers, or dictating on this matter for the public, he confined himself to saying that, if he had known of the Prince's letter, he would perhaps have pardoned him, in view of the great political advantages which he could have derived from it; and when, writing with his own hand his last thoughts, which he concludes will be recorded in the present age and reach posterity, he states, with reference to this subject, which he regards as one of the most delicate for his memory, that, if it were to be done over again, he would do it again."

This passage, in so far as the writer is concerned, possesses all the characteristics of the most perfect sincerity; this shines through to the very phrase in which M. le Comte de Las Cases declared that Bonaparte would have eagerly pardoned a man who was not guilty. But the theories of the master are subtleties by aid of which an effort is made to reconcile the irreconcilable. In making the distinction between "common law or established justice, and natural law or the errors of violence," Napoleon seemed to be content with a piece of sophistry which in reality did not content him! He was unable to subject his conscience as he had subjected the world. A weakness natural to superior men and to little men, when they have committed a fault, is to wish to represent it as a work of genius, a vast combination beyond the understanding of the vulgar. Pride says those things, and folly believes them. Bonaparte doubtless regarded as the mark of the ruling mind the sentence which he delivered in his great man's compunction: "My dear fellow, such is retributive justice here below!" O truly philosophical emotion! What impartiality! How well it justifies, by laying it to the charge of destiny, the evil which has sprung from ourselves! A man nowadays thinks it an all-sufficient excuse to exclaim, "After all, it was my nature, it was the infirmity of mankind." When he has killed his father he repeats, "I am made like that!" And the crowd stands open-mouthed, and they examine the mighty man's bumps, and they recognise that he was "made like that." And what care I that you are made like that! Must I submit to this manner of being? The world would be a fine chaos if all the men who are "made like that" were to take it into their heads to force themselves one upon the other. Those who are unable to wipe out their errors deify them: they make a dogma of their evil-doing, they turn acts of sacrilege into religion, and they would think themselves apostates were they to renounce the cult of their iniquities.

*

There is a serious lesson to be drawn from Bonaparte's life. Two actions, both bad, began and caused his fall: the death of the Duc d'Enghien and the war with Spain. It was vain for him to ride over them with his glory: they remained there to ruin him. He perished on the very side in which he thought himself strong, profound, invincible, when he violated the moral law while neglecting and scorning his real strength, that is, his superior qualities of order and equity. So long as he confined himself to attacking anarchy and foreigners hostile to France, he was victorious; he found himself robbed of his vigour so soon as he entered upon the paths of corruption: the shaving of the locks by Delilah is nothing other than the loss of virtue. Every crime bears within itself a radical incapacity and a germ of misfortune: let us then practise good to be happy, and let us be just to be able.

In proof of this truth, observe that, at the very moment of the Prince's death, commenced the dissent which, growing in proportion to ill-fortune, decided the fall of the ordainer of the tragedy of Vincennes. The Russian Cabinet, in reference to the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien, addressed vigorous representantions against the violation of the territory of the Empire: Bonaparte felt the blow, and replied in the Moniteur with a fulminating article bringing up the death of Paul I[639]. A funeral service had been celebrated in St. Petersburg for young Condé. On the cenotaph was read:

"To the Duc d'Enghien quem devoravit bellua Corsica."

The two mighty adversaries subsequently became reconciled in appearance; but the mutual wound which policy had inflicted and insult-enlarged remained in their hearts. Napoleon did not think himself revenged until he came to sleep in Moscow; Alexander[640] was not satisfied before he entered Paris.