"There was only one man living then in Europe: the rest filled their lungs with the air that he had breathed. Each year France gave three hundred thousand young men to this man; it was the tax paid to Cæsar, and if he had not had that mob behind him, he would not have been able to carry out his plans. Never were there so many nights without sleep as in the time of this man; never has one seen so many desolated mothers, never such silence, the hush around the shadow of death. And yet there was never so much joy, so much life, so much war-like music in hearts. Never was there such pure sunlight as that which dried up all this blood. It was the air of this sky without a cloud, where shone so much glory, where so much steel glittered, that the children were then breathing. They knew well that they were destined to the hecatombs, but they believed Murat to be invulnerable, and one had seen the Emperor pass immune through such a hail of bullets that one doubted whether he could die. Death was so fine then, so great, so magnificent in its smoky purple.... The cradles of France were shields and coffins also. There were no longer any old men, but corpses and demi-gods. Nevertheless, France, widow of Cæsar, felt suddenly her wound. She began to fail and slept with so heavy a sleep that her old kings, believing her dead, wrapped her in a white shroud. The old, grey-haired army returned, worn out with fatigue, and the fires on the hearths of deserted châteaux sadly rekindled." The war is over; the children no longer see sabres and cuirasses; Cæsar is dead, the portraits of Wellington and Blücher hang in the Consulates. Anxious children sit on the ruins of the world, the children that were born at the breast of war, for the war. They had dreamed during fifteen years of the snows of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids. Every one was tired, used up, exhausted. The light of life had gone out. The children, when they spoke of glory, were urged to become priests, priests when one spoke of ambition, love and hope; and, whilst life outside was so pale and shabby, the internal life of society took on an aspect silent and sombre. The habits of students and artists were affected; they became addicted to wine and women. And then De Musset speaks of the influence that Goethe and Byron—the two finest geniuses of the century according to Napoleon—exercised over Europe. "Can’t you put a little honey in the fine vases you make?" he asks of Goethe; and of Byron he questions, "Have you no well-beloved near your dear Adriatic?" and adds that though perhaps he, personally, has suffered more than the English poet, he believes yet in hope and blesses God. It is the reign of despair. "The ills of the century come from two causes," he says: "the people who have experienced the Revolution and Waterloo carry two wounds in their hearts. All that was, is no more; all that will be, is not yet. Do not look elsewhere for the secret of our ills."