He could enjoy every
play of invention, a romance, a _bon mot_, as well as a stratagem
in a campaign. He delighted to fascinate Josephine and her ladies, in
a dim-lighted apartment, by the terrors of a fiction, to which his
voice and dramatic power lent every addition.
I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern
society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses,
manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich. He was
the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver,
the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors
and markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse. Of course, the rich
and aristocratic did not like him. England, the center of capital, and
Rome and Austria, centers of tradition and genealogy, opposed him. The
consternation of the dull and conservative classes, the terror of the
foolish old men and old women of the Roman conclave,--who in their
despair took hold of anything, and would cling to red-hot iron,--the
vain attempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, of the emperor of
Austria to bribe him; and the instinct of the young, ardent, and active
men, everywhere, which pointed him out as the giant of the middle
class, make his history bright and commanding.
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