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To conquer an independence with the sole object to procreate, to breed, to traffic in, and to whip slaves! The navy is glorious everywhere, and not fussy. The people can never sufficiently remunerate the navy, if patriotic services are to be remunerated. The same would be with the army but for the Napoleons!
It is this madness for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons.
It is thus that socialism, because it represents a higher phase of human evolution, would eliminate from the present phase only the bad products of our unbridled economic individualism which creates, at one pole, the billionaires or "Napoleons of Finance" who enrich themselves in a few years by seizing upon in ways more or less clearly described in the penal code the public funds, and which, at the other pole, accumulates vast multitudes of poverty-stricken wretches in the slums of the cities or in the houses of straw and mud which reproduce in the South of Italy, the quarters of the Helots of antiquity, or in the valley of the Po, the huts of the Australian bushmen.
Shortly after he had gone, a hoarse voice behind me cried: "Permit me, my dear sir permit me to restore to their proper place two napoleons which you have dropped. Wonderful luck, sir! I pledge you my word of honour, as an old soldier, in the course of my long experience in this sort of thing, I never saw such luck as yours never! Go on, sir Sacre mille bombes! Go on boldly, and break the bank!"
If all the people in the house were men of destiny it would still be better that they should not all talk into the telephone at once; nay, it would be better that the silliest man of all should speak uninterrupted. If an army actually consisted of nothing but Hanibals and Napoleons, it would still be better in the case of a surprise that they should not all give orders together.
Gambouge’s five napoleons looked insignificant by the side of the heaps which were around him; but the effects of the wine, of the theft, and of the detection by the pawnbroker, were upon him, and he threw down his capital stoutly upon the 0 0. It is a dangerous spot that 0 0, or double zero; but to Simon it was more lucky than to the rest of the world.
He went through; Jacques followed; and instinctively they hastened towards a place where several trees made a dark shadow. Once there, Jacques handed Trumence a package of five-franc notes, and said, "Add this to the hundred Napoleons I have given you before. Thank you: you are a good fellow, and, if I get out of my trouble, I will not forget you. And now let us part.
After all, perhaps, it might be as well that I should leave them without any last words. "Greene, my dear," said the lady, "pay the gentleman his ten napoleons." "Oh yes, certainly;" whereupon Mr. Greene undid one of the rolls and extracted eight sovereigns. "I believe that will make it right, sir," said he, handing them to me.
Such was the true object of Napoleons last journey to Boulogne. I had been some time at Hamburg when these events took place, and it was curious to observe the effect they produced. But I must not forget one circumstance in which I am personally concerned, and which brings me back to the time when I was in Paris.
In a few days I shall have crossed the Inn. Good by, my dear; much love to Hortense, to Eugene, and to the two Napoleons. Keep the wedding present for some time yet. Yesterday I gave a concert to the ladies of this court. The leader is a worthy man. I have shot pheasants with the Elector; you see I am not worn out. M. de Talleyrand has come."