eeded a warning." He decreed that those German officers
who were made prisoner while fighting for their country's independence
should be shot against the nearest wall, and when Andreas Hofer, the
Tyrolese hero, fell into his hands after a most heroic resistance, he
was executed like a common traitor.

In short, when we study the character of the Emperor, we begin to
understand those anxious British mothers who used to drive their
children to bed with the threat that "Bonaparte, who ate little boys
and girls for breakfast, would come and get them if they were not very
good." And yet, having said these many unpleasant things about this
strange tyrant, who looked after every other department of his army with
the utmost care, but neglected the medical service, and who ruined his
uniforms with Eau de Cologne because he could not stand the smell of
his poor sweating soldiers; having said all these unpleasant things
and being fully prepared to add many more, I must confess to a certain
lurking feeling of doubt.

Here I am sitting at a comfortable table loaded heavily with books, with
one eye on my typewriter and the other on Licorice the cat, who has a
great fondness for carbon paper, and I am telling you that the Emperor
Napoleon was a most contemptible person. But should I happen to look
out of the window, down upon Seventh Avenue, and should the endless
procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and should I hear
the sound of the heavy drums and see the little man on his white horse
in his old and much-worn green uniform, then I don't know, but I am
afraid that I would leave my books and the kitten and my home and
everything else to follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own
grandfather did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero.
Millions of other people's grandfathers did it. They received no reward,
but they expected none. They cheerfully gave legs and arms and lives
to serve this foreigner, who took them a thousand miles away from their
homes and marched them into a barrage of Russian or English or Spanish
or Italian or Austrian cannon and stared quietly into space while they
were rolling in the agony of death.

If you ask me for an explanation, I must answer that I have none. I can
only guess at one of the reasons. Napoleon was the greatest of actors
and the whole European continent was his stage. At all times and under
all circumstances he knew the precise attitude that would impress the
spe