place himself on the summit of immortality on which he wished to place
his name. Witness what he wrote to his brother Jerome, "Better never, to
have lived than to live without glory;" witness also what he wrote later
to his brother Louis, "It is better to die as a King than to live as a
Prince." How often in the days of my intimacy with Bonaparte has he not
said to me, "Who knows the names of those kings who have passed from the
thrones on which 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