Unhappily for us all, in the world of visions and dreams, there is a
dark side to human life. Here have been dreamed out all the crimes which
have steeped our race in shame since the expulsion from Eden, and all
the wars that have cursed mankind since the birth of history. Alexander
the Great was a monster whose sword drank the blood of a conquered
world. Julius Cæsar marched his invincible armies, like juggernauts,
over the necks of fallen nations. Napoleon Bonaparte rose with the
morning of the nineteenth century, and stood, like some frightful comet,
on its troubled horizon. Distraught with the dream of conquest and
empire, he hovered like a god on the verge of battle. Kings and emperors
stood aghast. The sun of Austerlitz was the rising sun of his glory and
power, but it went down, veiled in the dark clouds of Waterloo, and
Napoleon the Great, uncrowned, unthroned, and stunned by the dreadful
shock that annihilated the Grand Army and the Old Guard, "wandered
aimlessly about on the lost field," in the gloom that palled a fallen
empire, as Hugo describes him, "the somnambulist of a vast, shattered
dream."