to lose his head at the shouts of outlawry.... they had to drag
him out.... they even thought for a moment that he was going to
faint."[1221] After the abdication at Fontainebleau, on encountering the
rage and imprecations which greeted him in Provence, he seemed for
some days to be morally shattered; the animal instincts assert their
supremacy; he is afraid and makes no attempt at concealment.[1222] After
borrowing the uniform of an Austrian colonel, the helmet of a Prussian
quartermaster, and the cloak of the Russian quartermaster, he still
considers that he is not sufficiently disguised. In the inn at Calade,
"he starts and changes color at the slightest noise"; the commissaries,
who repeatedly enter his room, "find him always in tears." "He wearies
them with his anxieties and irresolution"; he says that the French
government would like to have him assassinated on the road, refuses to
eat for fear of poison, and thinks that he might escape by jumping out
of the window. And yet he gives vent to his feelings and lets his
tongue run on about himself without stopping, concerning his past, his
character, unreservedly, indelicately, trivially; like a cynic and one
who is half-crazy; his ideas run loose and crowd each other like the
anarchical gatherings of a tumultuous mob; he does not recover his
mastery of them until he reaches Frejus, the end of his journey, where
he feels himself safe and protected from any highway assault; then only
do they return within ordinary limits and fall back in regular line
under the control of the sovereign intellect which, after sinking for
a time, revives and resumes its ascendancy.--There is nothing in him
so extraordinary as this almost perpetual domination of the lucid,
calculating reason; his willpower is still more formidable than his
intelligence; before it can obtain the mastery of others it must be
master at home. To measure its power, it does not suffice to note its
fascinations; to enumerate the millions of souls it captivates, to
estimate the vastness of the obstacles it overcomes: we must again, and
especially, represent to ourselves the energy and depth of the passions
it keeps in check and urges on like a team of prancing, rearing
horses--it is the driver who, bracing his arms, constantly restrains the
almost ungovernable steeds, who controls their excitement, who regulates
their bounds, who takes advantage even of their viciousness to guide his
noisy vehicle over precipices a