It is not surprising that Napoleon should thus have won, in the heart of Josephine the most enthusiastic love. "He is," said she, "the most fascinating of men." Said the Duchess of Abrantes, "It is impossible to describe the charm of Napoleon's countenance when he smiled. His soul was upon his lips and in his eyes." "I never," said the Emperor Alexander, "loved any man as I did that man." Says the Duke of Vicenza, "I have known nearly all the crowned heads of the present day--all our illustrious contemporaries. I have lived with several of those great historical characters on a footing quite distinct from my diplomatic duties. I have had every opportunity of comparing and judging. But it is impossible to institute any comparison between Napoleon and any other man. They who say otherwise did not know him." Says Duroc, "Napoleon is endowed with a variety of faculties, any one of which would suffice to distinguish a man from the multitude. He is the greatest captain of the age. He is a statesman who directs the whole business of the country, and superintends every branch of the service. He is a sovereign whose ministers are merely his clerks. And yet this Colossus of gigantic proportions can descend to the most trivial details of private life. He can regulate the expenditure of his household as he regulates the finances of the empire." Notwithstanding Napoleon had now destroyed four Austrian armies, the imperial court was still unsubdued, and still pertinaciously refused to make peace with republican France. Herculean efforts were immediately made to organize a fifth army to march again upon Napoleon. These exciting scenes kept all Italy in a state of extreme fermentation. Every day the separation between the aristocratic and the republican party became more marked and rancorous. Austria and England exerted all their arts of diplomacy to rouse the aristocratic governments of Rome, Venice, and Naples to assail Napoleon in the rear, and thus to crush that spirit of republican liberty so rapidly spreading through Italy, and which threatened the speedy overthrow of all their thrones. Napoleon, in self-defense, was compelled to call to his aid the sympathies of the republican party, and to encourage their ardent aspirations for free government.