The would-be authentic documents of that time are tainted; nothing was published, books or newspapers, save by the master's order: Bonaparte saw to the articles in the Moniteur; his prefects sent back from the various departments the recitals, the congratulations, the felicitations, in the form in which the Paris authorities had dictated and forwarded them, in which form they expressed a conventional public opinion, quite different from the real opinion. Write history from such documents as those! In proof of your impartial studies, quote the authentic sources to which you have gone: you will only be quoting a lie in support of a lie.
If it were possible to call this universal imposture into question, if men who have not seen the days of the Empire were to insist upon regarding as sincere all that they come upon in printed documents, or even all that they might dig up in certain boxes at the public offices, it would be enough to appeal to an unexceptionable witness, to the "Conservative" Senate; there, in the decree which I have quoted above, you have seen its own words:
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"Taking into consideration that the liberty of the press has been constantly submitted to the arbitrary censorship of his police, and that, at the same time, he has always made use of the press to fill France and Europe with fabricated facts and false maxims; that acts and reports, passed by the Senate, have undergone alterations when made public, etc."
Is there any reply possible to this declaration?
The life of Bonaparte was an incontestable truth, which imposture had taken upon itself to write.
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Pride and affectation.
A monstrous pride and an incessant affectation spoil Napoleon's character. At the time of his dominion, what need had he to exaggerate his stature, when the God of Armies had furnished him with the war chariot "whose wheels are living"?
He took after the Italian blood; his nature was complex: great men, a very small family upon earth, unhappily find only themselves to imitate them. At once a model and a copy, a real personage and an actor representing that personage, Napoleon was his own mime; he would not have believed himself a hero, if he had not dressed himself up in a hero's costume. This curious weakness gives something false and equivocal to his astonishing realities: one is afraid of taking the king of kings for Roscius, or Roscius for the king of kings.