Are they not now trying to transform the Emperor into a Roman of the early days of the Aventine, into a missionary of liberty, into a citizen who instituted slavery only for love of the opposite virtue? Draw your conclusions from two features of the great founder of equality: he ordered his brother Jerome's marriage with Miss Patterson[380] to be annulled, because the brother of Napoleon could ally himself only with the blood of Princes; later, after returning from the isle of Elba, he invested the new "democratic" constitution with a peerage and crowned it with the "Additional Act." That Bonaparte, following up the successes of the Revolution, everywhere disseminated principles of independence; that his victories helped to relax the bonds between the peoples and the kings, and snatched those peoples from the power of the old customs and the ancient ideas; that, in this sense, he contributed to the social enfranchisement: these are facts which I do not pretend to contest; but that, of his own will, he laboured scientifically for the political and civil deliverance of the nations; that he established the narrowest despotism with the idea of giving to Europe and to France in particular the widest Constitution; that he was only a tribune disguised as a tyrant: all this is a supposition which I cannot possibly adopt. Bonaparte, like the race of princes, desired nothing and sought nothing save power, attaining it, however, through liberty, because he made his first appearance on the world's stage in 1793. The Revolution, which was Napoleon's wet-nurse, did not long delay in appearing to him as an enemy; he never ceased beating her. The Emperor, for the rest, knew evil very well, when the evil did not come directly from the Emperor; for he was not destitute of moral sense. The sophism put forward concerning Bonaparte's love for liberty proves only one thing, the abuse which can be made of reason; nowadays it lends itself to everything. Is it not established that the Terror was a time of humanity? In fact, were they not demanding the abolition of the death-penalty while they were killing everybody? Have not great civilizers, as they are "called," always immolated men, and is it not therefore, as far as has been "proved," that Robespierre was the continuer of Jesus Christ? [Sidenote: Napoleon's popularity.]