rench people? He is strangely deluded if he
thinks that a mutilated throne can offer an asylum to his daughter and
grandson.... Ah, Metternich, how much has England given you to make you
play this part against me?" (This last phrase, omitted in Metternich's
narrative, is a characteristic trait; Napoleon at this decisive moment,
remains insulting and aggressive, gratuitously and even to his own
destruction.)]

[Footnote 12142: "Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie," I., 235.]

[Footnote 12143: Ibid., I., 230. Some days before Napoleon had said to
M. de Narbonne, who told me that very evening: "After all, what has this
(the Russian campaign) cost me? 300,000 men, among whom, again, were
a good many Germans."--"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc,
Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. II. 110. (Apropos of the Frankfurt basis, and
accepted by Napoleon when too late.) "What characterizes this mistake
is that it was committed much more against the interests of France
than against his own.... He sacrificed her to the perplexities of his
personal situation, to the mauvaise honte of his own ambition, to the
difficulty he finds in standing alone to a certain extent before a
nation which had done everything for him and which could justly reproach
him with having sacrificed so much treasure and spilled so much blood on
enterprises proved to have been foolish and impracticable."]

[Footnote 12144: Leonce de Lavergne, "Economie rurale de la France,"
P.40. (According to the former director of the conscription under the
Empire.)]

BOOK SECOND. FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF THE NEW STATE.

CHAPTER I. THE INSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT

I. The Institution of Government.

Conditions on which the public power can act.--Two points
forgotten by the authors of the preceding constitutions.--
Difficulty of the undertaking and poor quality of the
available materials.

Every human society requires government, that is to say an authority. No
other machinery is more useful. But a machinery is useful only if it
is adapted to its purpose; if not it will not work, or may even work
contrary to its purpose. Hence, during its construction, one must first
of all consider the magnitude of the work it has to do as well as the
quality of the materials one has at one's disposal. It is very important
to know beforehand whether it will lift 100 or of 100,000 kilograms,
whether the pieces fitted together will be of iron or of st