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Updated: May 2, 2025
What I think of Napoleon, if you wish to know, is that, made for glory, he had the brilliant simplicity of the hero of an epic poem. A hero must be human. Napoleon was human." "Oh, oh!" every one exclaimed. But Paul Vence continued: "He was violent and frivolous; therefore profoundly human. I mean, similar to everybody. He desired, with singular force, all that most men esteem and desire.
But I see you prefer to be witty only in tete-a-tetes." Count Martin-Belleme escorted the men to the smoking-room. Paul Vence alone remained with the women. Princess Seniavine asked him if he had finished his novel, and what was the subject of it. It was a study in which he tried to reach the truth through a series of plausible conditions.
Evremond, cheery little Godeau, Bishop of Vence, and half a dozen other famous wits had been present, a supper bristling with royal personages. Death had come with appalling suddenness while the lamps of the festival were burning, and the cards were still upon the tables, and the last carriage had but just rolled under the porte cochere.
That Loyer is a bad man, harsh to the unfortunate, to the weak, and to the humble. And Garain, don't you think his mind is disgusting? Do you remember the first time I dined at your house and we talked of Napoleon? Your hair, twisted above your neck, and shot through by a diamond arrow, was adorable. Paul Vence said subtle things. Garain did not understand. You asked for my opinion."
The General wished to please Garain, and he had no other idea. However, he succeeded, after an effort, in formulating a judgment: "Napoleon committed faults; in his situation he should not have committed any." And he stopped abruptly, very red. Madame Martin asked: "And you, Monsieur Vence, what do you think of Napoleon?"
That Loyer is a bad man, harsh to the unfortunate, to the weak, and to the humble. And Garain, don't you think his mind is disgusting? Do you remember the first time I dined at your house and we talked of Napoleon? Your hair, twisted above your neck, and shot through by a diamond arrow, was adorable. Paul Vence said subtle things. Garain did not understand. You asked for my opinion."
"Madame," continued Paul Vence, "I shall not say like Renan, my beloved master: 'What does Sirius care? because somebody would reply with reason 'What does little Earth care for big Sirius? But I am always surprised when people who are adult, and even old, let themselves be deluded by the illusion of power, as if hunger, love, and death, all the ignoble or sublime necessities of life, did not exercise on men an empire too sovereign to leave them anything other than power written on paper and an empire of words.
"My dear sir, I shall shock you, perhaps; but if I had to choose, I should like better to do an immoral thing than a cruel one." A young man, tall, thin, dark, with a long moustache, entered, and bowed with brusque suppleness. "Monsieur Vence, I think that you know Monsieur Le Menil." They had met before at Madame Martin's, and saw each other often at the Fencing Club.
Vence reminded her that he had told her she would find Dechartre interesting. "I know him by heart; he has been my friend since our childhood." "You knew his parents?" "Yes. He is the only son of Philippe Dechartre." "The architect?" "The architect who, under Napoleon III, restored so many castles and churches in Touraine and the Orleanais. He had taste and knowledge.
"I am afraid, Madame, that Monsieur Paul Vence has told you many absurd stories about me. I have heard that he goes about circulating rumors that my ribbon is a bell-rope and of what a bell! I should be pained if anybody believed so wretched a story. My ribbon, Madame, is a symbolical ribbon.
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