erwise. The Pope, they declared, had been the real
author of the terrible civil war fomented by the unyielding clergy,
and waged with such fury in France. Moreover, the whole sentimental
and philosophical movement of the century in France and elsewhere
considered the ecclesiastical centralization and hierarchical tyranny
of the papacy as a dangerous survival of absolutism.

But Bonaparte was wise in his generation. The contributions he levied
throughout Italy were terrible; but they were such as she could bear,
and still recuperate for further service in the same direction. The
liberalism of Italy was, moreover, not the radicalism of France; and a
submissive papacy was of incalculably greater value both there and
elsewhere in Europe than an irreconcilable and fugitive one. The Pope,
too, though weakened and humiliated as a temporal prince, was spared
for further usefulness to his conqueror as a spiritual dignitary.
Beyond all this was the enormous moral influence of a temperate and
apparently impersonal policy. Bonaparte, though personally and by
nature a passionate and wilful man, felt bound, as the representative
of a great movement, to exercise self-restraint, taking pains to live
simply, dress plainly, almost shabbily, and continuing by calm
calculation to refuse the enormous bribes which began and continued to
be offered to him personally by the rulers of Italy. His generals and
the fiscal agents of the nation were all in his power, because it was
by his connivance that they had grown enormously rich, he himself
remaining comparatively poor, and for his station almost destitute.
The army was his devoted servant; Italy and the world should see how
different was his moderation from the rapacity of the republic and its
tools, vandals like the commissioners Gareau and Salicetti.

Such was the "leisure" of one who to all outward appearance was but a
man, and a very ordinary one. In the medals struck to commemorate this
first portion of the Italian campaign, he is still the same slim
youth, with lanky hair, that he was on his arrival in Paris the year
previous. It was observed, however, that the old indifferent manner
was somewhat emphasized, and consequently artificial; that the gaze
was at least as direct and the eye as penetrating as ever; and that
there was, half intentionally, half unconsciously, disseminated all
about an atmosphere of peremptory command--but that was all. The
incarnation of ambition was long since