书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
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第896章

the letters to Admirable Decrès, to despatch naval expeditions to the colonies (Aug.17 and Sept. 26);the letter to Mollien on the budget of expenditure (Aug. 8);the letter to Clarke on the statement of guns in store throughout the empire (Sept. 14).

Other letters, ordering the preparation of two treatises on military art (Oct. 1), two works on the history and encroachments of the Holy See (Oct. 3), prohibiting conferences at Saint-Sulpice (Sept. 15), and forbidding priests to preach outside the churches (Sept. 24).-From Schoenbrunn, he watches the details of public works in France and Italy; for instance, the letters to M. le Montalivet (Sept.30), to send an auditor post to Parma, to have a dyke repaired at once, and (Oct. 8) to hasten the building of several bridges and quays at Lyons.

[70] He says himself; "I always transpose my theme in many ways."[71] Madame de Rémusat, I., 117, 120. "1 heard M. de Talleyrand exclaim one day, some what out of humor, 'This devil of a man misleads you in all directions. Even his passions escape you, for he finds some way to counterfeit them, although they really exist.'" - For example, immediately prior to the violent confrontation with Lord Whitworth, which was to put an end to the treaty of Amiens, he was chatting and amusing himself with the women and the infant Napoleon, his nephew, in the gayest and most unconcerned manner: "He is suddenly told that the company had assembled. His countenance changes like that of an actor when the scene shifts. He seems to turn pale at will and his features contract"; he rises, steps up precipitately to the English ambassador, and fulminates for two hours before two hundred persons. (Hansard's Parliamentary History, vol. XXVI, dispatches of Lord Whitworth, pp. 1798, 1302, 1310.) - "He often observes that the politician should calculate every advantage that could be gained by his defects." One day, after an explosion he says to Abbé de Pradt:

"You thought me angry! you are mistaken. Anger with me never mounts higher than here (pointing to his neck)."[72] Roederer, III. (The first days of Brumaire, year VIII.)[73] Bourrienne, III., 114.

[74] Bourrienne, II., 228. (Conversation with Bourrienne in the park at Passeriano.)[75] Ibid., II., 331. (Written down by Bourrienne the same evening.)[76] Madame de Rémusat, I., 274. - De Ségur, II., 459. (Napoleon's own words on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz): "Yes, if I had taken Acre, I would have assumed the turban, I would have put the army in loose breeches; I would no longer have exposed it, except at the last extremity; I would have made it my sacred battalion, my immortals. It is with Arabs, Greeks, and Armenians that I would have ended the war against the Turks. Instead of one battle in Moravia Iwould have gained a battle of Issus; I would have made myself emperor of the East, and returned to Paris by the way of Constantinople." - De Pradt, p.19 (Napoleon's own words at Mayence, September, 1804): "Since two hundred years there is nothing more to do in Europe; it is only in the East that things can be carried out on a grand scale."[77] Madame de Rémusat, I., 407. - Miot de Melito, II., 214 (a few weeks after his coronation): "There will be no repose in Europe until it is under one head, under an Emperor, whose officers would be kings, who would distribute kingdoms to his lieutenants, who would make one of them King of Italy, another King of Bavaria, here a landmann of Switzerland, and here a stadtholder of Holland, etc."[78] "Correspondance de Napoleon I.," vol. XXX., 550, 558. (Memoirs dictated by Napoleon at Saint Hélène.) - Miot de Melito, II., 290. -D'Hausonvillc, "l'église Romaine et le Premier Empire," passiM. -"Mémorial." "Paris would become the capital of the Christian world, and I would have governed the religious world as well as the political world."[79] De Pradt, 23.

[80] "Mémoires et Mémorial." "It was essential that Paris should become the unique capital, not to be compared with other capitals.

The masterpieces of science and of art, the museums, all that had illustrated past centuries, were to be collected there. Napoleon regretted that he could not transport St. Peter's to Paris; the meanness of Notre Dame dissatisfied him."[81] Villemain, "Souvenir contemporaines," I., 175. Napoleon's statement to M. de Narbonne early in March, 1812, and repeated by him to Villemain an hour afterwards. The wording is at second hand and merely a very good imitation, while the ideas are substantially Napoleon's. Cf. his fantasies about Italy and the Mediterranean, equally exaggerated ("Correspondence," XXX., 548), and an admirable improvisation on Spain and the colonies at Bayonne. - De Pradt.

"Mémoires sur les revolutions d'Espagne," p.130: "Therefore Napoleon talked, or rather poetised; he Ossianized for a long time . . .

like a man full of a sentiment which oppressed him, in an animated, picturesque style, and with the impetuosity, imagery, and originality which were familiar to him, . . . on the vast throne of Mexico and Peru, on the greatness of the sovereigns who should possess them . .

. . and on the results which these great foundations would have on the universe. I had often heard him, but under no circumstances had Iever heard him develop such a wealth and compass of imagination.

Whether it was the richness of his subject, or whether his faculties had become excited by the scene he conjured up, and all the chords of the instrument vibrated at once, he was sublime."[82] Roederer, III., 541 (February 2, 1809): "I love power. But Ilove it as an artist. . . . I love it as a musician loves his violin, for the tones, chords, and harmonies he can get out of it."