er effected, each treaty signed, each decree promulgated, each
order issued, and I venture to say, behind almost every improvised
action or word spoken. For calculation enters into everything he does,
even into his apparent expansiveness, also into his outbursts when in
earnest; if he gives way to these, it is on purpose, foreseeing the
effect, with a view to intimidate or to dazzle. He turns everything in
others as well as in himself to account--his passion, his vehemence, his
weaknesses, his talkativeness, he exploits it all for the advancement
of the edifice he is constructing.[1171] Certainly among his diverse
faculties, however great, that of the constructive imagination is
the most powerful. At the very beginning we feel its heat and boiling
intensity beneath the coolness and rigidity of his technical and
positive instructions.

"When I plan a battle," said he to Roederer, "no man is more spineless
than I am. I over exaggerate to myself all the dangers and all the evils
that are possible under the circumstances. I am in a state of truly
painful agitation. But this does not prevent me from appearing quite
composed to people around me; I am like a woman giving birth to a
child.[1172]

Passionately, in the throes of the creator, he is thus absorbed with
his coming creation; he already anticipates and enjoys living in his
imaginary edifice. "General," said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre to him,
one day, "you are building behind a scaffolding which you will take
down when you have done with it." "Yes, Madame, that's it,"
replied Bonaparte; "you are right. I am always living two years in
advance."[1173] His response came with "incredible vivacity," as if a
sudden inspiration, that of a soul stirred in its innermost fiber.--Here
as well, the power, the speed, fertility, play, and abundance of his
thought seem unlimited. What he has accomplished is astonishing, but
what he has undertaken is more so; and whatever he may have undertaken
is far surpassed by what he has imagined. However vigorous his practical
faculty, his poetical faculty is stronger; it is even too vigorous for
a statesman; its grandeur is exaggerated into enormity, and its enormity
degenerates into madness. In Italy, after the 18th of Fructidor, he said
to Bourrienne:

"Europe is a molehill; never have there been great empires and
great revolutions, except in the Orient, with its 600,000,000
inhabitants."[1174]

The following year at Saint-Jean d'Acre, o