and preserved the
new ideas by means of his Civil Code and a firm government.

Countless memoirs have been published by those who lived in those heroic
times. Yet everything which will cast new light upon the chief actors in
that great drama of humanity is still seized upon with avidity,
especially whatever concerns the Emperor.

This is not merely because he was a great conqueror; for such were, after
their fashion, Genghis Khan and Timour, and hundreds of others. But it
is because of the human interest which attaches to the wonderful career
of Napoleon and the events of which he was the central figure.

Never did poet or novelist imagine scenes so improbable. The son of an
obscure lawyer in an unimportant island becomes Emperor of the French and
King of Italy. His brothers and sisters become kings and queens. The
sons of innkeepers, notaries; lawyers, and peasants become marshals of
the empire. The Emperor, first making a West India Creole his wife and
Empress, puts her away, and marries a daughter of the haughtiest and
oldest royal house in Europe, the niece of a queen whom the people of
France had beheaded a few years before. Their son is born a king--King
of Rome. Then suddenly the pageantry dissolves, and Emperor, kings, and
queens become subjects again. Has imagination ever dreamed anything
wilder than this? The dramatic interest of this story will always
attract, but there is a deeper one. The secret spring of all those rapid
changes, and the real cause of the great interest humanity will always
feel in the story of those eventful times, is to be found in Napoleon's
own explanation--"A career open to talents, without distinction of
birth." Till that day the accident of birth was the key to every honor
and every position. No man could hold even a lieutenancy in the army who
could not show four quarterings on his coat of arms.

It was as the "armed apostle of democracy" that Napoleon went forth
conquering and to conquer. He declared at St. Helena that he "had always
marched supported by the opinions of six millions of men."

The old woman who met him incognito climbing the hill of Tarare, and
replying to his assertion that "Napoleon was only a tyrant like the
rest," exclaimed, "It may be so, but the others are the kings of the
nobility, while he is one of us, and we have chosen him ourselves,"
expressed a great truth. As long as Napoleon represented popular
sovereignty he was invincible; but when, deeming hims