any
labours and victories, would fall a prey to dismemberment.

"The Russian emperor," he said, "was the only sovereign who pressed upon
the summit of that colossal edifice. Replete with youth and animation,
the strength of his rival was constantly augmenting, while his was
already on the decline." It seemed to him that Alexander, on the banks
of the Niemen, only waited the intelligence of his death, to possess
himself of the sceptre of Europe, and snatch it from the hands of his
feeble successor. "While all Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Prussia, and
the whole of Germany, were marching under his banners, why should he
delay to anticipate the danger, and consolidate the fabric of the great
empire, by driving back Alexander and the Russian power, enfeebled as
they would be by the loss of all Poland, beyond the Boristhenes?"

Such were his sentiments, pronounced in secret confidence; they,
doubtless, comprised the true motives of that terrible war. As to his
precipitation in commencing it, he was, it would seem, hurried on by the
instinct of his approaching death. An acrid humour diffused through his
blood, and to which he imputed his irascibility, ("but without which,"
added he, "battles are not to be gained,") undermined his constitution.

A profound knowledge of the organization and mysteries of the human
frame would probably enable us to decide whether this concealed malady
was not one of the causes of that restless activity which hurried on the
course of events, and in which originated both his elevation and his
fall.

This internal enemy testified its presence, more and more, by an
internal pain, and by the violent spasms of the stomach which it
inflicted. Even in 1806, at Warsaw, during one of its agonizing crises,
Napoleon was[15] heard to exclaim, "that he carried about with him the
germ of premature dissolution; and that he should die of the same malady
as his father."

[Footnote 15: By the count Lobau.]

Short rides in hunting, even the most gentle gallop of his horse,
already began to fatigue him: how then was he to support the long
journeys, and the rapid and violent movements preparatory to battles?
Thus it was, that while the greater part of those who surrounded him
concluded him to be impelled into Russia by his vast ambition, by his
restless spirit and his love of war, he in solitude, and almost
unobserved, was poising the fearful responsibilities of the enterprise,
and urged by necessity, he only ma