A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and, in the name of Brutus, he grasped--without remorse and wore without shame the diadem of the Caesars. Through this pantomime of policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the color of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of victory,--his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny,--ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But, if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his counsels; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook the character of his mind,--if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacle that he did not surmount--space no opposition that he did not spurn: and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity. The whole continent trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Skepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplace in his contemplation; kings were his people--nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were titular dignitaries of the chess-board. Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant. It mattered little whether in the field or in the drawing-room, with the mob or the levee--wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown--banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg--dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic--he was still the same military despot.