izens to place before their sons. Such was the man who seemed
to have no vice, till circumstance, that hotbed, brought forth the two
which, in ordinary times, lie ever the deepest and most latent in a
man's heart,--Cowardice and Envy. To one of these sources is to be
traced every murder that master-fiend committed. His cowardice was of
a peculiar and strange sort; for it was accompanied with the most
unscrupulous and determined WILL,--a will that Napoleon reverenced;
a will of iron, and yet nerves of aspen. Mentally, he was a
hero,--physically, a dastard. When the veriest shadow of danger
threatened his person, the frame cowered, but the will swept the danger
to the slaughter-house. So there he sat, bolt upright,--his small, lean
fingers clenched convulsively; his sullen eyes straining into space,
their whites yellowed with streaks of corrupt blood; his ears literally
moving to and fro, like the ignobler animals', to catch every sound,--a
Dionysius in his cave; but his posture decorous and collected, and every
formal hair in its frizzled place.

"Yes, yes," he said in a muttered tone, "I hear them; my good Jacobins
are at their post on the stairs. Pity they swear so! I have a law
against oaths,--the manners of the poor and virtuous people must
be reformed. When all is safe, an example or two amongst those good
Jacobins would make effect. Faithful fellows, how they love me!
Hum!--what an oath was that!--they need not swear so loud,--upon the
very staircase, too! It detracts from my reputation. Ha! steps!"

The soliloquist glanced at the opposite mirror, and took up a volume;
he seemed absorbed in its contents, as a tall fellow, a bludgeon in his
hand, a girdle adorned with pistols round his waist, opened the door,
and announced two visitors. The one was a young man, said to resemble
Robespierre in person, but of a far more decided and resolute expression
of countenance. He entered first, and, looking over the volume in
Robespierre's hand, for the latter seemed still intent on his lecture,
exclaimed,--

"What! Rousseau's Heloise? A love-tale!"

"Dear Payan, it is not the love,--it is the philosophy that charms me.
What noble sentiments!--what ardour of virtue! If Jean Jacques had but
lived to see this day!"

While the Dictator thus commented on his favourite author, whom in his
orations he laboured hard to imitate, the second visitor was wheeled
into the room in a chair. This man was also in what, to most, is the
pr