A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon--a magnificent
tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a deity dead--and gazed upon the
sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of
that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the
career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.
I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I saw
him at Toulon. I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris. I
saw him at the head of the army in Italy. I saw him crossing the bridge at
Lodi with the tricolor in his hand. I saw him in Egypt, in the shadow of
the Pyramids. I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France
with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo, at Ulm, and at
Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, when the infantry of the snow and the
cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered
leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster--driven by a million
bayonets back upon Paris--clutched like a wild beast--banished to Elba. I
saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him
upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where chance and fate combined to
wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with
his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.
I thought of the widows and orphans he had made, of the tears that had
been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed
from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather
have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes; I would rather have
lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing
purple in the amorous kisses of the autumn sun; I would rather have been
that poor peasant, with my wife by my side knitting as the day died out of
the sky, with my children upon my knees and their arms about me; I would
rather have been this man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the
dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial personation of force and
murder known as Napoleon the Great.