o,' said de Meneval. 'What energy! Eighteen hours
out of twenty-four for weeks on end. He has presided over the
Legislative Council until they were fainting at their desks. As to me,
he will be the death of me, just as he wore out de Bourrienne; but I
will die at my post without a murmur, for if he is hard upon us he is
hard upon himself also.'

'He was the man for France,' said de Caulaincourt. 'He is the very
genius of system and of order, and of discipline. When one renumbers
the chaos in which our poor country found itself after the Revolution,
when no one would be governed and everyone wanted to govern someone
else, you will understand that only Napoleon could have saved us.
We were all longing for something fixed to secure ourselves to, and then
we came upon this iron pillar of a man. And what a man he was in those
days, Monsieur de Laval! You see him now when he has got all that he
can want. He is good-humoured and easy. But at that time he had got
nothing, but coveted everything. His glance frightened women.
He walked the streets like a wolf. People looked after him as he
passed. His face was quite different--it was craggy, hollow-cheeked,
with an oblique menacing gaze, and the jaws of a pike. Oh, yes, this
little Lieutenant Buonaparte from the Military School of Brienne was a
singular figure. "There is a man," said I, when I saw him, "who will
sit upon a throne or kneel upon a scaffold." And now look at him!'

'And that is ten years ago,' I exclaimed.

'Only ten years, and they have brought him from a barrack-room to the
Tuileries. But he was born for it. You could not keep him down.
De Bourrienne told me that when he was a little fellow at Brienne he had
the grand Imperial manner, and would praise or blame, glare or smile,
exactly as he does now. Have you seen his mother, Monsieur de Laval?
She is a tragedy queen, tall, stern, reserved, silent. There is the
spring from which he flowed.'

I could see in the gentle, spaniel-eyes of the secretary that he was
disturbed by the frankness of de Caulaincourt's remarks.

'You can tell that we do not live under a very terrible tyranny,
Monsieur de Laval,' said he, 'or we should hardly venture to discuss our
ruler so frankly. The fact is that we have said nothing which he would
not have listened to with pleasure and perhaps with approval. He has
his little frailties, or he would not be human, but take his qualities
as a ruler and I would ask you