l more important, we must
consider the genius and taste of the architect, especially whether he
is the proprietor, whether he built it to live in himself, and, once
installed in it, whether he took pains to adapt it to how own way of
living, to his own necessities, to his own use.--Such is the social
edifice erected by Napoleon Bonaparte, its architect, proprietor, and
principal occupant from 1799 to 1814. It is he who has made modern
France; never was an individual character so profoundly stamped on any
collective work, so that, to comprehend the work, we must first study
the character of the Man.[1102]

I. Napoleon's Past and Personality.

He is of another race and another century.--Origin of his
paternal family.--Transplanted to Corsica.--His maternal
family.--Laetitia Ramolino.--Persistence of Corsican
souvenirs in Napoleon's mind.--His youthful sentiments
regarding Corsica and France.--Indications found in his
early compositions and in his style.--Current monarchical or
democratic ideas have no hold on him.--His impressions of
the 20th of June and 10th of August after the 31st of May.
--His associations with Robespierre and Barras without
committing himself.--His sentiments and the side he takes
Vendemiaire 13th.--The great Condottiere.--His character and
conduct in Italy.--Description of him morally and physically
in 1798.--The early and sudden ascendancy which he exerts.
Analogous in spirit and character to his Italian ancestors
of the XVth century.

Disproportionate in all things, but, stranger still, he is not only
out of the common run, but there is no standard of measurement for him;
through his temperament, instincts, faculties, imagination, passions,
and moral constitution he seems cast in a special mould, composed of
another metal than that which enters into the composition of his fellows
and contemporaries. Evidently he is not a Frenchman, nor a man of the
eighteenth century; he belongs to another race and another epoch.[1103]
We detect in him, at the first glance, the foreigner, the Italian,[1104]
and something more, apart and beyond these, surpassing all similitude
or analogy.-Italian he was through blood and lineage; first, through
his paternal family, which is Tuscan,[1105] and which we can follow
down from the twelfth century, at Florence, then at San Miniato; next
at Sarzana, a small, backward, remote town in the st