atched the star of

NAPOLEON

as it first flickered over the rock-rimmed island of Corsica, foam fringed
by the green waters of the Mediterranean. I saw it glitter over the
mathematical charity scholar of France, the "puss in boots" at royal
receptions, the artillery officer at the Bridge of Lodi, the general of the
French-Italian army, scaling the cloud-kissing Alps in mid winter, bearing
the eagles of liberty over the plains of Lombardy, on to Milan and Rome,
until the tramp of the unconquerable Frank echoed through the streets and
halls of the Caesars, and re-echoed in the lofty aisles and arches of the
Vatican!

I beheld again the star of this "man of destiny" shine in glorious splendor
at Maringo, Wagram, Austerlitz, Jena, Leipsic and Ulm, and then as First
Consul and Emperor, sweeping with his unconquerable columns over the sands
of Egypt and snows of Russia, until at last the fires and smoke of Moscow
bedimmed the horizon of his glory, and lit up the funeral pyre of five
hundred thousand of the best soldiers of France, led to their doom by the
crazy ambition of a selfish tyrant!

Again I saw him escape from Elba, bare his breast to the guns of his former
legions and rout royalty from its palace portals, and sweeping for a
hundred days over the vineclad hills of France, he finally on the 18th of
June, 1815, marshaled his magnificent army around the plains and hills of
Waterloo, defying the Austrian, Prussian, Russian and British allied
armies to the death grapple of the century, and went down to irretrievable
defeat.

And then after five long years of an exile imprisonment on the barren isle
of St. Helena, I heard his last gasp, "Head of the Army!"

"With no friend but his sword and no fortune but his talents, he rushed in
the lists, where rank and wealth and genius had arrayed themselves; and
competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny.

"A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he
impoverished the country; and in the name of Brutus, he grasped without
remorse and wore without shame the diadem of the Caesars!

"Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual
consistency were never united in the same character; a Royalist, a
Republican and an Emperor; a Mahometan, a Catholic, and a patron of the
synagogue, a subaltern and a sovereign, a traitor and a tyrant, a Christian
and infidel, he was through all his vicissitudes, the same stern,
impatien