‘Nothing very good.’

’So I have gathered from their papers.  They drive the Emperor frantic, and yet he will insist upon reading them.  I am willing to lay a wager that the very first thing which he does when he enters London will be to send cavalry detachments to the various newspaper offices, and to endeavour to seize the editors.’

‘And the next?’

‘The next,’ said he, laughing, ’will be to issue a long proclamation to prove that we have conquered England entirely for the good of the English, and very much against our own inclinations.  And then, perhaps, the Emperor will allow the English to understand that, if they absolutely demand a Protestant for a ruler, it is possible that there are a few little points in which he differs from Holy Church.’

‘Too bad!  Too bad!’ cried de Meneval, looking amused and yet rather frightened at his companion’s audacity.  ’No doubt for state reasons the Emperor had to tamper a little with Mahomedanism, and I daresay he would attend this Church of St. Paul’s as readily as he did the Mosque at Cairo; but it would not do for a ruler to be a bigot.  After all, the Emperor has to think for all.’

‘He thinks too much,’ said Caulaincourt, gravely.  ’He thinks so much that other people in France are getting out of the way of thinking at all.  You know what I mean, de Meneval, for you have seen it as much as I have.’

‘Yes, yes,’ answered the secretary.  ’He certainly does not encourage originality among those who surround him.  I have heard him say many a time that he desired nothing but mediocrity, which was a poor compliment, it must be confessed, to us who have the honour of serving him.’

’A clever man at his Court shows his cleverness best by pretending to be dull,’ said Caulaincourt, with some bitterness.

‘And yet there are many famous characters there,’ I remarked.

’If so, it is only by concealing their characters that they remain there.  His ministers are clerks, his generals are superior aides-de-camp.  They are all agents.  You have this wonderful man in the middle, and all around you have so many mirrors which reflect different sides of him.  In one you see him as a financier, and you call it Lebrun.  In another you have him as a gendarme, and you name it Savary or Fouche.  In yet another he figures as a diplomatist, and is called Talleyrand.  You see different figures, but it is really the same man.  There is a Monsieur de Caulaincourt, for example, who arranges the household; but he cannot dismiss a servant without permission.  It is still always the Emperor.  And he plays upon us.  We must confess, de Meneval, that he plays upon us.  In nothing else do I see so clearly his wonderful cleverness.  He will not let us be too friendly lest we combine.  He has set his Marshals against each other until there are hardly two of them on speaking terms.  Look how Davoust hates Bernadotte, or