Cruelty and kindness, selfishness and generosity, loyalty and treachery, honesty and perfidy, are almost unmeaning terms if applied without qualification to Napoleon. Where his plans were not involved, he frequently manifested the human virtues in their highest form; where those plans were involved, he practised all the vices without scruple or pity. Naturally he was humane, charitable, kind, indulgent, sympathetic, generous; if policy required it, he became as hard as steel. He left no debt of gratitude unpaid; ignored none of the claims, however slight, of kindred and old association. See how he behaves toward Madame Permon, how tolerant he is of that intolerable woman, how he forgets her snubs, how he forgives her a public insult, how he follows her with respectful consideration all the days of her life--and why? She had been kind to him when he was a poor boy, had nursed his father on the death-bed. “It is a devil of a temper, but a noble heart;” and the noble heart makes him forget the devil of a temper. He gave place and pension to early sweetheart, to boyhood friends, to schoolmates, to teachers. The son and daughter of General Marbeuf found him delighted to serve them in remembrance of their father. The widow of the Duke of Orleans who had chanced to be the giver of a prize to him at Brienne, and who had forgotten all about it, was happily surprised to find that he had remembered. He restored her confiscated pension, and gave a relative of hers a place in the Senate. To the daughter of Madame de Brienne he proved himself a vigilant guardian. So the record runs throughout his life, and his last will is little more than a monument of gratitude to those who had at any time done him a service. He was not free from superstition. What people called “omens” made an impression upon him. He sometimes made the sign of the cross, as though to ward off impending evil. When in Italy the glass over Josephine’s portrait was broken, Marmont says that he turned frightfully pale, and exclaimed that his wife was either dead or unfaithful. He was a man of insatiable curiosity. He wished to know everything, and to have a hand in everything. His police infested every nook and corner, and over his police he set spies, and over the spies he set the informer. Thus he had two or three systems going at the same time. He not only sought to know all about public affairs, but private matters also. He delighted in gossip and scandal, hugely enjoying his ability to twit some man or some woman with an amour which he had discovered. Theatre talk, street talk, drawing-room talk, were reported to him regularly. Copying the Bourbon example, he opened private letters to ascertain what correspondents were saying to each other. He allowed no freedom of the press, and no real freedom of speech. Journals which showed the least independence he suppressed. Authors, actors, orators, who ventured upon forbidden ground, felt the curb at once.