"Such was his usual amenity, concerning which I remember that one day when our outbursts of laughter in the drawing-room were interrupting his work in the adjoining study, he just opened the door to complain that we were hindering him, with a gentle request that we should be a little less noisy."
There are many passages in Ségur which show the Marshals of Napoleon in a far from favourable light Their ambition, their selfishness, their murderous jealousy of each other, shock and appal―especially when one sees thousands of the lives of brave men sacrificed to passions so ignoble. These pictures also enable one to take a different view of Napoleon's treatment of these men than that to which Taine has given such fierce expression. It will be remembered that Taine bitterly complains that Napoleon appealed only to the basest elements in these men; that he exploited their selfishness, their ambition, their vices, and their weaknesses. After one has read Ségur and some other authorities, one is tempted to come to the conclusion that if Napoleon acted on these motives in his subordinates, it was because these motives were the only ones to which he could appeal.
I pass from this point and from Ségur to another and an even more fervid eulogist of the great Emperor.
M. Albert Lévy devotes two bulky volumes to
