last during his life; for he is constantly raising his edifice higher
and higher, while all that his building gains in elevation
it loses in stability. "The Emperor is crazy," said Decrees to
Marmont,[12131]"completely crazy. He will ruin us all, numerous as we
are, and all will end in some frightful catastrophe." In effect, he is
pushing France on to the abyss, forcibly and by deceiving her, through a
breach of trust which willfully, and by his fault, grows worse and worse
just as his own interests, as he comprehends these, diverge from those
of the public from year to year.

At the treaty of Luneville and before the rupture of the peace of
Amiens,[12132] this variance was already considerable. It becomes
manifest at the treaty of Presbourg and still more evident at the treaty
of Tilsit. It is glaring in 1808, after the deposition of the Spanish
Bourbons; it becomes scandalous and monstrous in 1812, when the war with
Russia took place. Napoleon himself admits that this war is against
the interests of France and yet he undertakes it.[12133] Later, at St.
Helena, he falls into a melting mood over "the French people whom he
loved so dearly."[12134] The truth is, he loves it as a rider loves his
horse; as he makes it rear and prance and show off its paces, when he
flatters and caresses it; it is not for the advantage of the animal but
for his own purposes, on account of its usefulness to him; to be spurred
on until exhausted, to jump ditches growing wider and wider, and leap
fences growing higher and higher; one ditch more, and still another
fence, the last obstacle which seems to be the last, succeeded by
others, while, in any event, the horse remains forcibly and for ever,
what it already is, namely, a beast of burden and broken down.--For, on
this Russian expedition, instead of frightful disasters, let us imagine
a brilliant success, a victory at Smolensk equal to that of Friedland,
a treaty of Moscow more advantageous than that of Tilsit, and the
Czar brought to heel. As a result the Czar is probably strangled or
dethroned, a patriotic insurrection will take place in Russia as in
Spain, two lasting wars, at the two extremities of the Continent,
against religious fanaticism, more irreconcilable than positive
interests, and against a scattered barbarism more indomitable than a
concentrated civilization. At best, a European empire secretly mined
by European resistance; an exterior France forcibly superposed on
the enslav