n England you find yourself also most at home in a
dim light. I think that the brains of these people must be as dense as
their fogs, to judge by the nonsense which they write in their accursed
papers.' With one of those convulsive gestures which accompanied his
sudden outbursts of passion he seized a sheaf of late London papers from
the table, and ground them into the fire with his heel. 'An editor!' he
cried in the guttural rasping voice which I had heard when I first met
him. 'What is he? A dirty man with a pen in a back office. And he
will talk like one of the great Powers of Europe. I have had enough of
this freedom of the Press. There are some who would like to see it
established in Paris. You are among them, Talleyrand. For my part I
see no need for any paper at all except the _Moniteur_ by which the
Government may make known its decisions to the people.'

'I am of opinion, Sire,' said the minister, 'that it is better to have
open foes than secret ones, and that it is less dangerous to shed ink
than blood. What matter if your enemies have leave to rave in a few
Paris papers, as long as you are at the head of five hundred thousand
armed men?'

'Ta, ta, ta!' cried the Emperor impatiently. 'You speak as if I had
received my crown from my father the late king. But even if I had, it
would be intolerable, this government by newspaper. The Bourbons
allowed themselves to be criticised, and where are they now? Had they
used their Swiss Guards as I did the Grenadiers upon the eighteenth
Brumaire what would have become of their precious National Assembly?
There was a time when a bayonet in the stomach of Mirabeau might have
settled the whole matter. Later it took the heads of a king and queen
and the blood of a hundred thousand people.'

He sat down, and stretched his plump, white-clad legs towards the fire.
Through the blackened shreds of the English papers the red glow beat
upwards upon the beautiful, pallid, sphinx-like face--the face of a
poet, of a philosopher--of anything rather than of a ruthless and
ambitious soldier. I have heard folk remark that no two portraits of
the Emperor are alike, and the fault does not lie with the artists but
with the fact that every varying mood made him a different man. But in
his prime, before his features became heavy, I, who have seen sixty
years of mankind, can say that in repose I have never looked upon a more
beautiful face.

'You have no dreams and no illusi