The genius of Napoleon never exhibited such vast fertility of resources as when he battled for life and empire in his own dominions.  Every foot of ground was wrested from him at an expense of life which thinned the innumerable hosts pressing onward to his destruction.  He stood at bay against all Europe in arms; and so desperately did he contend against the vast odds opposed to him, and so rapidly did he move from one invading column to another, successively beating back division upon division, that his astonished foes, awed by his superhuman exertions, had wellnigh turned their faces to the Rhine in panic-stricken retreat.  But the line of invasion was so widely extended that even his ubiquity could not compass it.  His wonderful power of concentration was of little avail to him when the mere skeletons of regiments answered to his call, and, along his weakened line, the neglected gleanings left by the conscription, now hastily garnered in this last extremity, greeted him in the treble notes of childhood.  The voices of the bearded men, which once hailed his presence, were hushed in death.  They had shouted his name in triumph over Europe, and it had quivered on their lips when parched with the moral agony.  Their bones were whitening the sands of Egypt, the harvests of Italy had long waved over them, their unnumbered graves lay thick in the German’s Fatherland, and the floods of the Berezina were yet giving up their unburied dead.  The remnant of that once invincible army did all that could be done; but there were limits to endurance, and exhaustion anticipated the hour of combat.  Men fell dead in their ranks, untouched by shot or steel; and yet the survivors pressed on to take up the positions assigned by their leader, who seemed to be proof against either fatigue or despair.  His last bold move, on which he staked his empire, was a splendid effort, but it failed him.  It was the daring play of a desperate gamester, and nearly checkmated his opponents.  But when, instead of pursuing him, they marched on Paris, he left his army to follow as it could, and hastened to anticipate his enemies.  When about fifteen miles from Paris, he received news of the battle of Montmartre and the capitulation of the city.  The post-house where he encountered this intelligence was within sight of the place where I passed my vacations.  I often looked at it with interest, for it was there that the vision first flashed before him of his broken empire and the utter ruin which bade farewell to hope.  He had become familiar with reverses.  His veteran legions had perished in unequal strife with the elements, or melted away in the hot flame of conflict; his most devoted adherents had fallen around him; yet his iron soul bore up against his changing fortunes, and from the wrecks of storm and battle there returned

-------“the conqueror’s broken car,
The conqueror’s yet unbroken heart.”

But the spirit which had never quailed before his enemies was crushed by the desertion of his friends.  He had now to feel that treason and ingratitude are attendants on adversity, and that the worshippers of power, like the Gheber devotee, turn their faces reverently towards the rising sun.