e as a bulletin' became a proverb in Napoleon's time. He makes what
excuse he could for it: that it was necessary to mislead the enemy, to
keep up his own men's courage, etc. On the whole these are no excuses. A
man in no case has any liberty to tell lies. It had been in the long run
better for Napoleon too if he had not told any. In fact, if a man have any
purpose beyond the hour and day, meant to be found extant next day, what
good can it ever be to promulgate lies? The lies are found out; ruinous
penalty is exacted for them. No man will believe the liar next time, even
when he speaks truth, when it is of the last importance that he be
believed. The old cry of the 'wolf!' A lie is _no_-thing; you cannot of
nothing make something; you make _nothing_ at last, and lose your labour
in the bargain.

Yet Napoleon _had_ a sincerity: we are to distinguish between what is
superficial and what is fundamental insincerity. Across these outer
manoeuvrings and quackeries of his, which were many and most blameable,
let us discern withal that the man had a certain instinctive ineradicable
feeling for reality; and did base himself upon fact so long as he had any
basis. He has an instinct of nature better than his culture was. His
_savans_, Bourrienne tells us, in that voyage to Egypt were one evening
busily occupied arguing that there could be no God. They had proved it to
their satisfaction by all manner of logic. Napoleon, looking up into the
stars, answers, 'Very ingenious, Messieurs; but _who made_ all that?' The
Atheistic logic runs off from him like water; the great Fact stares him in
the face. 'Who made all that?' So too in practice; he, as every man that
can be great, or have victory in this world, sees through all
entanglements, the practical heart of the matter; drives straight toward
that. When the steward of his Tuilleries Palace was exhibiting the new
upholstery, with praises and demonstrations, how glorious it was and how
cheap withal, Napoleon, making little answer, asked for a pair of
scissors, clipped one of the gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in
his pocket, and walked on. Some days afterward he produced it at the right
moment, to the horror of the upholstery functionary: it was not gold but
tinsel! In Saint Helena, it is notable how he still, to his last days,
insists on the practical, the real. 'Why talk and complain? Above all, why
quarrel with one another? There is no _resultat_ in it; it comes to
nothin