character, his accomplices, his policy, his crimes, is perhaps
unequalled in historical literature; I know not where else to look
for a vivisection so scientific and so merciless of a great
potentate in the height of his power. With scrutiny polite,
impartial, guarded, he lays bare the springs of a conscienceless
nature and the secrets of a crime-driven career; while for the
combination of precise simplicity with exhaustive synopsis, the
masquerading of moral indignation in the guise of mocking laughter,
the loathing of a gentleman for a scoundrel set to the measure not
of indignation but of contempt, we must go back to the refined
insolence, the [Greek text which cannot be reproduced] of Voltaire.
He had well known Prince Napoleon in his London days, had been
attracted by him as a curiosity--"a balloon man who had twice
fallen from the skies and yet was still alive"--had divined the
mental power veiled habitually by his blank, opaque, wooden looks,
had listened to his ambitious talk and gathered up the utterances
of his thoughtful, long-pondering mind, had quarrelled with him
finally and lastingly over rivalry in the good graces of a woman.
{21} He saw in him a fourfold student; of the art of war, of the
mind of the first Napoleon, of the French people's character, of
the science by which law may lend itself to stratagem and become a
weapon of deceit.

The intellect of this strange being was subject to an uncertainty
of judgment, issuing in ambiguity of enterprise, and giving an
impression of well-kept secrecy, due often to the fact that divided
by mental conflict he had no secret to tell. He understood truth,
but under the pressure of strong motive would invariably deceive.
He sometimes, out of curiosity, would listen to the voice of
conscience, and could imitate neatly on occasion the scrupulous