etc., etc.,
beyond the capability of enumeration.

The English were particularly active in disseminating libels upon
Napoleon; they charged him in their books and pamphlets with murder,
arson, incest, treason, treachery, cowardice, seduction, hypocrisy,
avarice, robbery, ingratitude, and jealousy; they said that he poisoned
his sick soldiers, that he was the father of Hortense's child, that he
committed the most atrocious cruelties in Egypt and Italy, that he
married Barras' discarded mistress, that he was afflicted with a
loathsome disease, that he murdered the Duc d'Enghien and officers in
his own army of whom he was jealous, that he was criminally intimate
with his own sisters--in short, there was no crime, however revolting,
with which these calumniators were not hasty to charge the emperor.

This same vindictive hatred was visited also upon all associated with
Bonaparte in the conduct of affairs at that time. Murat was "a brute
and a thief"; Josephine, Hortense, Pauline, and Mme. Letitia were
courtesans; Berthier was a shuffling, time-serving lackey and tool;
Augereau was a bastard, a spy, a robber, and a murderer; Fouche was the
incarnation of every vice; Lucien Bonaparte was a roue and a marplot;
Cambaceres was a debauchee; Lannes was a thief, brigand, and a
poisoner; Talleyrand and Barras were--well, what evil was told of them
has yet to be disproved. But you would gather from contemporaneous
English publications that Bonaparte and his associates were veritable
fiends from hell sent to scourge civilization. These books are so
strangely curious that we find it hard to classify them: we cannot call
them history, and they are too truculent to pass for humor; yet they
occupy a distinct and important place among Napoleonana.

Until William Hazlitt's life of Bonaparte appeared we had no English
treatment of Bonaparte that was in any sense fair, and, by the way,
Hazlitt's work is the only one in English I know of which gives the
will of Bonaparte, an exceedingly interesting document.

For a good many years I held the character of Napoleon in light esteem,
for the reason that he had but small regard for books. Recent
revelations, however, made to me by Dr. O'Rell (grandnephew of "Tom
Burke of Ours"), have served to dissipate that prejudice, and I
question not that I shall duly become as ardent a worshipper of the
Corsican as my doctor himself is. Dr. O'Rell tells me--and his
declarations are corroborated by Fr