Did the treacherously yielding waves that lapped his island home ever suggest to Nap that horror scene, when after Austerlitz, as the fleeing enemy were escaping over the frozen lake, the French artillery, by order of the Emperor, played heavily upon the ice; it cracked, broke, crashed down, and thousands sank within the treacherous waves. Or did they softly sigh of Berezina, when the heavily laden bridge broke down and his own devoted soldiers and friends--those who had stood by him at Borodino, in Moscow, and in the dread Retreat--struggled in the icy waters? Nap’s _Memoires_ do not so record. And the dark rolling billows surf-capped--did they at times suggest low mounds in churchyards, or ominous ridges on recent battle grounds? Half a million men had died that Nap might rise and--fall. All Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow was dotted with their graves. Surely in the retrospective leisure of exile, however it may have been in the fever of the empire-strife, there was regret for all the young life suddenly darkened into death; there was awakening self-knowledge regretful, remorseful; there was lamentation at the futility of it all, the horror, the agony, the shame; there was prayer, the bitter prayer of Thais of the Desert, “Thou who hast made me have mercy on me!” Maybe: not ours to know the enigmatic heart of man; we only say there is no record of such feelings in Nap’s memoirs. Did the year 1809 loom sullen in retrospect? That year held in record the capture of Pope Pius VII. and his confinement at Savona; the ban of excommunication pronounced against Napoleon by his illustrious prisoner; and Nap’s divorce from Josephine. The Emperor was at this time at the height of his career. He was drunk with power. In his hand as playthings were the kingdoms of Europe, and he awarded them as whim or pleasure urged. To his brother Joseph, too scrupulous to be great, Nap condescendingly gave the throne of Spain; to his brother Louis, Holland; to his brother Jerome, Westphalia; to a favorite general, Bernadotte, Sweden; to Murat, Naples. At his touch, the Holy Roman Empire--no longer, indeed, either holy or Roman or an empire--had crumbled into dust. Germany lay prostrate; Austria humbled; Russia chastened, yet friendly. Only England, secure in her watery kingdom, dared to oppose his plans and resist his power. And then this madman on the dizzy height dreamed a glorious dream. The Pontiff, Pius VII., prisoner at Savona, would annul the marriage with Josephine; then he would marry the sister of the Tsar of Russia; then with the help of Russia he would conquer India and “so strike England to the heart.” After that “it will be possible to settle everything and have done with this business of Rome and the Pope. The cathedral of Paris will become that of the Catholic world.” And Napoleon shall be all in all. Perhaps, too, this rhapsody ended half audibly with the adulatory words of the prefect of Arras, “God created Napoleon and then rested from His works.”