strictures. At the same time, he frankly
acknowledged himself unable to effect the desired reforms. "It wants,
first of all, a younger and abler man than I am; secondly, he must
become a fixture. No change of ministry, no political vicissitudes ought
to affect him. I do not play a political role, and never mean to play
one; and if I could find a man who would carry out the reforms at the
War Office, or, rather, reorganize the whole as it should be
reorganized, I would make room for him to-morrow. I know what you are
going to say. I derive a very comfortable income from my various
offices, and I am a pluralist. If I did not take the money, some one
else would who has not got a scrap more talent than I have. There is not
a single man who dare tell the nation that its army is rotten to the
core, that there is not a general who knows as much as a mere captain in
the Austrian and Prussian armies; and if he had the courage to tell the
nation, he would be hounded out of the country, his life would be made a
burden to him. That is one of the reasons why I am staying, because I
can do no good by going; on the contrary, I might do a good deal of
harm. Because, as you see it, the three hundred and fifty thousand
francs of my different appointments, I save them by looking after the
money of the State. Not that I can do much, but I do what I can."

That was very true: he was very careful of the public moneys, and of the
resources of the Emperor also, entrusted to him by virtue of his
position as Grand-Marechal du Palais; it was equally true that he could
not do much. Napoleon was, by nature, lavish and soft-hearted; as a
consequence, he became the butt of every impostor who could get a letter
conveyed to him. His civil list of over a million and a half sterling
was never sufficient. He himself was simple enough in his tastes, but he
knew that pomp and state were dear to the heart of Frenchmen, and he
indulged them accordingly. But his charity was a personal matter. He
could have no more done without it than without his eternal cigarette.
He called the latter "safety-valve of the brain; the former the
safety-valve of pride." I remember an anecdote which was told to me by
some one who was in his immediate entourage when he was only President.
It was on the eve of a journey to some provincial town, and at the
termination of a cabinet council. While talking to some of his
ministers, he took a couple of five-franc pieces from his waistcoa