Napoleon had become a thorough man of the world. Hard experience had driven away sentimental illusions. The visionary of the Corsican sea-lulled grotto, the patriotic dreamer of the Brienne garden-harbor, had died some time ago. The man who now commanded the Army of the Interior was different altogether. Reading, experience, observation, the stern teachings of necessity, had taught him to believe that the Italian proverb was true, “One must not be too good, if one would succeed.” He believed now that rigid principles were like a plank strapped across the breast: not troublesome when the path led through the open, but extremely detrimental to speed in going through a wood. He had studied the lives of great men,--Alexander, Cæsar, Richelieu, Frederick, Cromwell,--and the study had not tended to his elevation in matters of method. He had studied the politics of the world, the records of national aggrandizement, the inner secrets of government, and his conceptions of public honor had not been made more lofty. He had come to believe that interest governed all men; that no such things as disinterested patriotism, truth, honor, and virtue existed on earth. He believed that life was a fight, a scramble, an unscrupulous rush for place, power, riches; and that the strongest, fleetest, most artful would win--especially if they would take all the short cuts. Idealogists he despised. Cold, calculating, disillusioned, he took the world as he found it. New men and women he could not create, nor could he create other conditions, moral, social, political, or material. He must recognize facts, must deal with actualities. If bad men alone could give him what he wanted, he must court the bad men. If bad men only could do the work he wanted done, he must use the bad men. Barras, Fréron, Tallien, being in power, he would get all he could out of them, just as he had exhausted the friendship of Robespierre and Salicetti, and just as he afterward used Fouché and Talleyrand.