ctator, he is a buffoon; let him make himself
emperor, he will be grotesque. That will finish him. His destiny is to
make mankind shrug their shoulders. Will he be less severely punished
for that reason? Not at all. Contempt does not, in his case, mitigate
anger; he will be hideous, and he will remain ridiculous. That is all.
History laughs and crushes.

Even the most indignant chroniclers will not help him there. Great
thinkers take satisfaction in castigating the great despots, and, in
some instances, even exalt them somewhat, in order to make them worthy
of their rage; but what would you have the historian do with this
fellow?

The historian can only lead him to posterity by the ear.

The man once stripped of success, the pedestal removed, the dust
fallen, the tinsel and spangles and the great sabre taken away, the
poor little skeleton laid bare and shivering,--can one imagine anything
meaner and more pitiful?

History has its tigers. The historians, immortal keepers of wild
beasts, exhibit this imperial menagerie to the nations. Tacitus alone,
that great showman, captured and confined eight or ten of these tigers
in the iron cage of his style. Look at them: they are terrifying and
superb; their spots are an element in their beauty. This is Nimrod, the
hunter of men; this, Busiris, the tyrant of Egypt; this, Phalaris, who
baked living men in a brazen bull, to make the bull roar; this,
Ahasuerus, who flayed the heads of the seven Maccabees, and had them
roasted alive; this, Nero, the burner of Rome, who smeared Christians
with wax and pitch, and then set them alight as torches; this,
Tiberius, the man of Capraea; this, Domitian; this, Caracalla; this,
Heliogabalus; that other is Commodus, who possesses an additional claim
to our respect in the horrible fact that he was the son of Marcus
Aurelius; these are Czars; these, Sultans; these, Popes, among whom
remark the tiger Borgia; here is Philip, called the Good, as the Furies
were called the Eumenides; here is Richard III, sinister and deformed;
here, with his broad face and his great paunch, Henry VIII, who, of
five wives that he had, killed three, one of whom he disemboweled; here
is Christiern II, the Nero of the North; here Philip II, the Demon of
the South. They are terrifying: hear them roar, consider them, one
after the other; the historian brings them to you; the historian drags
them, raging and terrible, to the side of the cage, opens their jaws
for you, s