There is a further similarity between the peasant girl and Napoleon. She was brought to the aid of her country by the voices of the unseen, and four hundred years after, when her country was again in dire trouble, he was found in obscurity and in an almost supernatural way flashed into prominent activity to save the Revolution.  It was the voices of the living, seen and unseen, that called aloud for the little Corporal to lead to battle, conquer, and ultimately govern.  It was some of the self-same voices that intrigued and then burst forth in declamation and demanded his abdication on the eve of his first reverse.  The Church, which owed its rehabilitation to him after he had implanted a settled government in France, had no small share in the conspiracy for his overthrow.  He said, “There is but one means of getting good manners, and that is by establishing religion.”  He believed it, and did it in spite of a storm of opposition that would have hurled a less resolute man from power, but he knew full well his strength, and was sure then, as he ever was, of his opinions.

The Church and those of the people who become allied to its material policy are prone to destroy those who have been of service to their cause.  There is indeed no society of men and women who are so vindictive, nay, revengeful, once they are seized with the idea that they are being neglected, or their interests not receiving all the patronage they think they deserve, and then, after a few generations of reflection, they become overwhelmed with unctuous sanctity and remorse, and proceed to make saints of the victims of their progenitors in order that the perfidy they are historically linked to shall be whitewashed and atoned for.

Napoleon believed that “No physical force ever dies; it merely changes its form or direction”—­and could we but get a glimpse behind the veil, we might see his imperishable soul fleeting from sphere to sphere, struggling with cruel reactionary spirits who forced him into eternity before the work he was sent to do was completed.

Wieland, the German writer, had an interview with him on the field of Jena.  He says:—­“I was presented by the Duchess of Weimar.  He paid me some compliments in an affable tone, and looked steadfastly at me.  Few men have appeared to me to possess in the same degree the art of reading at the first glance the thought of other men.  He saw in an instant that, notwithstanding my celebrity, I was simple in my manners and void of pretension, and as he seemed desirous of making a favourable impression on me, he assumed the tone most likely to attain his end.  I have never beheld anyone more calm, more simple, more mild, or less ostentatious in appearance; nothing about him indicated the feeling of power in a great monarch; he spoke to me as an old acquaintance would speak to an equal, and what was more extraordinary on his part, he conversed with me exclusively for an hour and a half, to the great surprise of the whole assembly.”