taggers the
power of belief, and yet he defies the whole world to prove that he
ever declared war or committed a single crime during the whole
carnival of warfare that drenched Europe in human blood.

Up to the present, the world has lamentably failed to do anything of
the sort. His opponents, libellers, and progeny of his mean
executioners, are all losing ground, and he is gaining everywhere.
There is an unseen hand at work revealing the awful truth. This
dignified, calm, unassuming man, while surrounded by a crowd of Kings
and Princes, who were competing with each other to do him homage and
show their devotion, startles them by telling a story of when he was
"a simple Lieutenant in the 2nd Company of Artillery." Possibly some
of his guests were observed to be putting on airs that were always
distasteful to the Emperor, and this was his scornful way of rebuking
them. Or it might be that he wished to take the opportunity of
informing Europe that he had no desire to conceal his humble
beginning, though at that time he was recognised first man in it.
Historians, when he was at the height of his power, ransacked musty
archives assiduously to find out and prove that he had royal blood in
him. They professed to have discovered that he was connected with the
princely family of Treviso, and the comical way in which he
contemptuously brushed aside this fulsome flattery must have lacerated
the pride of courtiers who sought favours by such methods.

Bearing on the royal blood idea, Gourgaud in his Journal relates that
the Emperor told him the following stories:--

"At one time in my reign there was a disposition to make out that I
was descended from the Man in the Iron Mask. The Governor of Pignerol
was named Bompars. They said he had married his daughter to his
mysterious prisoner, the brother of Louis XIV., and had sent the pair
to Corsica under the name of 'Bonaparte,'" and then with fine humour
he adds:--"I had only to say the word and everybody would have
believed the fable."

He never forgot that he was Napoleon, hence never said the word.

His insincere father-in-law has been industriously searching for royal
blood too, and this is what his son-in-law says of him:--

"When I was about to marry Marie Louise, her father the Emperor sent
me a box of papers intended to prove that I was descended from the
Dukes of Florence. I burst out laughing, and said to Metternich, 'Do
you suppose I am going to waste my time over suc