y others, would be
terminated by a battle.

Such were his anticipations; for, without deceiving himself as to his
good fortune, he reckoned on its influence upon others; it entered into
his estimate of his forces. It was for this reason that he always
pushed it forward where other things failed, making up by that whatever
was deficient in his means, without fearing to wear it out by constant
use, in the conviction that his enemies would place even more faith in
it than himself. However, it will be seen in the sequel of this
expedition, that he placed too much reliance on its power, and that
Alexander was able to evade it.

Such was Napoleon! Superior to the passions of men by his native
greatness, and also by the circumstance of being controlled by a still
greater passion! for when, indeed, are these masters of the world ever
entirely masters of themselves? Meantime blood was again about to flow;
and thus, in their great career, the founders of empires press forward
to their object, like Fate, whose ministers they seem, (and whose march
neither wars nor earthquakes, nor all the scourges which Providence
permits, ever arrest,) without deigning to make the utility of their
purposes comprehensible to their victims.

BOOK III.

CHAP. I.

The time for deliberation had passed, and that for action at last
arrived. On the 9th of May, 1812, Napoleon, hitherto always triumphant,
quitted a palace which he was destined never again to enter victorious.

From Paris to Dresden his march was a continued triumph. The east of
France, which he first traversed, was a part of the empire entirely
devoted to him; very different from the west and the south, she was only
acquainted with him by means of benefits and victories. Numerous and
brilliant armies, attracted by the fertility of Germany, and which
imagined themselves marching to a prompt and certain glory, proudly
traversed those countries, scattering their money among them, and
consuming their productions. War, in that quarter, always bore the
semblance of justice.

At a later period, when our victorious bulletins reached them, the
imagination, astonished to see itself surpassed by the reality, caught
fire; enthusiasm possessed these people, as in the times of Austerlitz
and Jena; numerous groups collected round the couriers, whose tidings
were listened to with avidity; and the inhabitants, in a transport of
joy, never separated without exclamations of "Long live