[Footnote 14:  Count Mole.]

To others, he pleaded the ambition of Russia, and the force of circumstances, which dragged him into the war in spite of himself.  With superficial and inexperienced individuals, to whom he neither wished to explain nor dissemble, he cut matters short, by saying, “You understand nothing of all this; you are ignorant of its antecedents and its consequents.”

But to the princes of his own family he had long revealed the state of his thoughts; he complained that they did not sufficiently appreciate his position.  “Can you not see,” said he to them, “that as I was not born upon a throne, I must support myself on it, as I ascended it, by my renown? that it is necessary for it to go on increasing; that a private individual, become a sovereign like myself, can no longer stop; that he must be continually ascending, and that to remain stationary will be his ruin?”

He then depicted to them all the ancient dynasties armed against his, devising plots, preparing wars, and seeking to destroy, in his person, the dangerous example of a roi parvenu.  It was on that account that every peace appeared in his eyes a conspiracy of the weak against the strong, of the vanquished against the victor; and especially of the great by birth against the great by their own exertions.  So many successive coalitions had confirmed him in that apprehension!  Indeed, he often thought of no longer tolerating an ancient power in Europe, of constituting himself into an epoch, of becoming a new era for thrones; in short, of making every thing take its date from him.

It was in this manner that he disclosed his inmost thoughts to his family by those vivid pictures of his political position, which, at the present day, will probably appear neither false nor over-coloured:  and yet the gentle Josephine, always occupied with the task of restraining and calming him, often gave him to understand “that, along with the consciousness of his superior genius, he never seemed to possess sufficient consciousness of his own power:  that, like all jealous characters, he incessantly required fresh proofs of its existence.  How came it, amidst the noisy acclamations of Europe, that his anxious ear could hear the few solitary voices which disputed his legitimacy? that in this manner his troubled spirit was always seeking agitation as its element:  that strong as he was to desire, but feeble to enjoy, he himself, therefore, would be the only one whom he could never conquer.”

But in 1811 Josephine was separated from Napoleon, and although he still continued to visit her in her seclusion, the voice of that empress had lost the influence which continual intercourse, familiar habits of affection, and the desire of mutual confidence, impart.