ch chance or birth seated them? They lived and died
unnoticed. The learned, perhaps, may find them mentioned in old
archives, and a medal or a coin dug from the earth may reveal to
antiquarians the existence of a sovereign of whom they had never before
heard. But, on the contrary, when we hear the names of Cyrus, Alexander,
Caesar, Mahomet, Charlemagne, Henry IV., and Louis XIV., we are
immediately among our intimate acquaintance." I must add, that when
Napoleon thus spoke to me in the gardens of Malmaison he only repeated
what had often fallen from him in his youth, for his character and his
ideas never varied; the change was in the objects to which they were
applied.

From his boyhood Napoleon was fond of reading the history of the great
men of antiquity; and what he chiefly sought to discover was the means by
which those men had become great. He remarked that military glory
secures more extended fame than the arts of peace and the noble efforts
which contribute to the happiness of mankind. History informs us that
great military talent and victory often give the power, which, in its
tern, procures the means of gratifying ambition. Napoleon was always
persuaded that that power was essential to him, in order to bend men to
his will, and to stifle all discussions on his conduct. It was his
established principle never to sign a disadvantageous peace. To him a
tarnished crown was no longer a crown. He said one day to M. de
Caulaincourt, who was pressing him to consent to sacrifices, "Courage may
defend a crown, but infamy never." In all the last acts of Napoleon's
career I can retrace the impress of his character, as I had often
recognised in the great actions of the Emperor the execution of a thought
conceived by the General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy.

On the opening of the Congress the Duke of Vicenza, convinced that he
could no longer count on the natural limits of France promised at
Frankfort by the Allies, demanded new powers. Those limits were
doubtless the result of reasonable concessions, and they had been granted
even after the battle of Leipsic; but it was now necessary that
Napoleon's Minister should show himself ready to make further concessions
if he wished to be allowed to negotiate. The Congress was opened on the
5th of February, and on the 7th the Plenipotentiaries of the Allied
powers declared themselves categorically. They inserted in the protocol
that after the successes which had favoured their arm