hman, and overflowing with Italian vivacity: he defended
the papal pretensions with obstinate ardour; and such was the warmth of
his discussions with the emperor, on a former occasion, that the latter
got into a passion, and told him, "that he would compel him to obey."
"And who contests your power?" returned the cardinal: "but force is not
argument; for if I am right, not all your power can make me wrong.
Besides, your majesty knows that I do not fear martyrdom."--"Martyrdom!"
replied Buonaparte, with a transition from violence to laughter; "do not
reckon on that, I beseech you, M. le Cardinal: martyrdom is an affair in
which there must be two persons concerned; and as to myself, I have no
desire to make a martyr of any individual."

It is said that these discussions assumed a more serious character
towards the end of 1811. An eye-witness asserts that the cardinal, till
that time a stranger to politics, then began to mix them up with his
religious controversies; that he conjured Napoleon not thus to fly in
the face of men, the elements, religion, earth and heaven, at the same
time; and that, at last, he expressed his apprehension of seeing him
sink under such a weight of enmity.

The only reply which the emperor made to this vehement attack was to
take him by the hand, and leading him to the window, to open it, and
inquire, "Do you see that star above us?"--"No, sire."--"Look
again."--"Sire, I do not see it."--"Very well! _I_ see it!" replied
Napoleon. The cardinal, seized with astonishment, remained silent,
concluding that there was no human voice sufficiently loud to make
itself heard by an ambition so gigantic, that it already reached the
heavens.

As to the witness of this singular scene, he understood in quite a
different sense these words of his sovereign. They did not appear to him
like the expression of an overweening confidence in his destiny, but
rather of the great distinction which Napoleon meant to infer as
existing between the grasp of his genius and that of the cardinal's
policy.

But granting even that Napoleon's soul was not exempt from a tendency to
superstition, his intellect was both too strong and too enlightened to
permit such vast events to depend upon a weakness. One great inquietude
possessed him; it was the idea of that same death, which he appeared so
much to brave. He felt his strength decaying; and he dreaded that when
he should be no more, the French empire, that sublime trophy of so m