mmodore Sidney
Smith at Alexandria, the purport of which was to allow you to return to
France on the condition, accepted by you, of restoring the throne to our
former kings."

Bonaparte burst out laughing.

"How astonishing you are, you plebeians!" he said, "with your love for
your former kings! Suppose that I did re-establish the throne (a thing,
I assure you, I have not the smallest desire to do), what return will
you get, you who have shed your blood for the cause? Not even the
confirmation of the rank you have won in it, colonel. Have you ever
known in the royalist ranks a colonel who was not a noble? Did you ever
hear of any man rising by his merits into that class of people? Whereas
with me, Georges, you can attain to what you will. The higher I raise
myself, the higher I shall raise those who surround me. As for seeing me
play the part of Monk, dismiss that from your mind. Monk lived in an
age in which the prejudices we fought and overthrew in 1789 were in full
force. Had Monk wished to make himself king, he could not have done
so. Dictator? No! It needed a Cromwell for that! Richard could not
have maintained himself. It is true that he was the true son of a great
man--in other words a fool. If I had wished to make myself king, there
was nothing to hinder me; and if ever the wish takes me there will be
nothing to hinder. Now, if you have an answer to that, give it."

"You tell me, citizen First Consul, that the situation in France in 1800
is not the same as England in 1660. Charles I. was beheaded in 1649,
Louis XVI. in 1793. Eleven years elapsed in England between the death
of the king and the restoration of his son. Seven years have already
elapsed in France since the death of Louis XVI. Will you tell me
that the English revolution was a religious one, whereas the French
revolution was a political one? To that I reply that a charter is as
easy to make as an abjuration."

Bonaparte smiled.

"No," he said, "I should not tell you that. I should say to you simply
this: that Cromwell was fifty years old when Charles I. died. I was
twenty-four at the death of Louis XVI. Cromwell died at the age of
fifty-nine. In ten years' time he was able to undertake much, but to
accomplish little. Besides, his reform was a total one--a vast political
reform by the substitution of a republican government for a monarchical
one. Well, grant that I live to be Cromwell's age, fifty-nine; that is
not too much to expect; I shall st