alternated by periods of despair, he allowed no more of this to
appear in his work than his esthetic sense approved of. Like all highly
organized people he sounded the gamut of joy and sorrow. His journal
entries tell the story. One day, exulting in life and its possibilities
he writes, "Oh, it would be glorious to live life over a thousand
times." At another time he calls upon his God in abject despair to help
him through the passing hour. At one time life is so difficult a problem
that he sees not how it can be continued at all. Then he loses himself
in his creations and soars into regions where his troubles cannot
follow. This joyousness is the portion of many extraordinary people.
Haydn and Mozart had it. "He has among other qualities that of great
joyousness," says Carlyle, in speaking of Richter. "Goethe has it to
some extent and Schiller too. It is a deep laughter, a wild laughter,
and connected with it, there is the deepest seriousness."

CHAPTER X

AT THE ZENITH OF HIS FAME

Fate bestoweth no gift which it taketh not back. Ask not aught of
sordid humanity; the trifle it bestoweth is a nothing.
--HAFIZ.

Napoleon's star, hitherto so uniformly in the ascendant, was now on the
wane. His victories at the battles of Luetzen and Bautzen in May of 1813,
could not atone for the disaster of Moscow in the previous year. The
crushing defeat encountered by the French at the battle of Vittoria by
the English under Wellington, and the battle of Leipzig in October of
the same year showed the world that here was only a man after all; a man
subject to the usual limitations and mutations of mankind. The demigod
was dethroned, the pedestal knocked from under, and all Europe rejoiced.
The nightmare of fear which had so long pervaded all classes, was after
all only a bad dream; the incubus could be shaken off, and mankind again
resume its normal mode of living. Waterloo was already foreshadowed in
the events of this year, and the people were wild with joy.

The alliance which followed Napoleon's marriage to the Austrian
Archduchess did not have the good political results which Metternich
expected from it. The war indemnity of fifteen millions of dollars, the
cession of provinces whereby three and one half millions of people were
lost to Austria, the reduction of the army to 150,000 men, exactions
made by Napoleon at the time of the marriage, did n