rtillery; and
besides, made him director-general of the gardens of the crown, with a
salary of thirty thousand francs. He also gave a government place to his
brother.

Napoleon, who seems always to have had some floating ideas of fatalism
in his mind, remarked that two of his comrades, Demasis and Philipeau,
had peculiar influence on his destiny. Philipeau had emigrated, and was
the engineer employed by Sir Sydney Smith to construct the defences of
Acre. We have seen that Demasis stopped him at the moment when he was
about to drown himself. "Philipeau," said he, "stopped me before St
Jean d'Acre: but for him, I should have been master of this key of the
East. I should have marched upon Constantinople, and rebuilt the throne
of the East."

This idea of sitting on the throne of the Turk, seems never to have left
Napoleon's mind. He was always talking of it, or dreaming of it. But it
may fairly be doubted, whether he could ever have found his way out of
Syria himself. With his fleet destroyed by Nelson, and his march along
the coast--perhaps the only practicable road--harassed by the English
cruisers; with the whole Turkish army ready to meet him in the defiles
of Mount Taurus; with Asia Minor still to be passed; and with the
English, Russian, and Turkish fleets and forces ready to meet him at
Constantinople, his death or capture would seem to be the certain
consequence of his fantastic expedition. The strongest imaginable
probability is, that instead of wearing the diadem of France, his head
would have figured on the spikes of the seraglio.

Suicide is so often the unhappy resource of men indifferent to all
religion, that we can scarcely be surprised at its having been
contemplated more than once by a man of fierce passions, exposed to the
reverses of a life like Napoleon's. Of the dreadful audacity of a crime,
which directly wars with the Divine will, which cuts off all possibility
of repentance, and which thus sends the criminal before his Judge with
all his sins upon his head, there can be no conceivable doubt. The only
palliative can be, growing insanity. But in the instance which is now
stated by the intended self-murderer, there is no attempt at palliation
of any kind.

"There was another period of my life," said Napoleon, "when I attempted
suicide; but you are certainly acquainted with this fact." "No, sire,"
was Montholon's reply.

"In that case, write what I shall tell you: for it is well that the
mysterie