“’How the horizon of His empire extends, and prolongs itself into infinitude!  Christ reigns beyond life and beyond death.  The past and the future are alike to Him; the kingdom of the truth has, and in effect can have, no other limit than the false.  Jesus has taken possession of the human race; He has made of it a single nationality, the nationality of upright men, whom He calls to a perfect life.

“’The existence of Christ from beginning to end is a tissue entirely mysterious, I admit; but that mystery meets difficulties which are in all existences.  Reject it, the world is an enigma; accept it, and we have an admirable solution of the history of man.

“’Christ speaks, and henceforth generations belong to Him by bonds more close, more intimate than those of blood, by a union more sacred, more imperious than any other union beside.  He kindles the flame of a love which kills out the love of self and prevails over every other love.  Without contradiction, the greatest miracle of Christ is the reign of love.  All who believe in Him sincerely feel this love, wonderful, supernatural, supreme.  It is a phenomenon inexplicable, impossible to reason and the power of man; a sacred fire given to the earth by this new Prometheus, of which Time, the great destroyer, can neither exhaust the force nor terminate the duration.  That is what I wonder at most of all, for I often think about it; and it is that which absolutely proves to me the divinity of Christ!’

“Here the Emperor’s voice assumed a peculiar accent of ironical melancholy and of profound sadness:  ’Yes, our existence has shone with all the splendour of the crown and sovereignty; and yours, Montholon, Bertrand, reflected that splendour, as the dome of the Invalides, gilded by us, reflects the rays of the sun.  But reverses have come; the gold is effaced little by little.  The rain of misfortunes and outrages with which we are deluged every day carries away the last particles; we are only lead, gentlemen, and soon we shall be but dust.  Such is the destiny of great men; such is the near destiny of the great Napoleon.

“’What an abyss between my profound misery and the eternal reign of Christ, proclaimed, worshipped, beloved, adored, living throughout the whole universe!  Is that to die?  Is it not rather to live?’”

A more beautiful panegyric on the divinity of Christ has never been pronounced.  The thrilling and convincing conclusions evolved from the mind of a great reader, a great thinker—­a man, in fact, who had studied and knew the human side of life, and could describe it with flawless accuracy—­are a complete refutation of the opinions expressed either from prejudice or personal and political motives.  Napoleon conversed about religion with other men in a critical way, not always with orthodox reverence, but certainly with the conviction that he had a thorough knowledge of every phase of the subject.  Perhaps he derived pleasure from showing that he did not accept the popular doctrine unreservedly.