Bonaparte is no longer the real Bonaparte, but a legendary figure put together from the vagaries of the poet, the talk of the soldier and the tales of the people; it is the Charlemagne and the Alexander of the idylls of the middle ages that we behold to-day. That fantastic hero will remain the real personage; the other portraits will disappear. Bonaparte is so strongly connected with absolute dominion that, after undergoing the despotism of his person, we have to undergo the despotism of his memory. This latter despotism is more overbearing than the former; for, though men fought against Napoleon when he was on the throne, there is an universal agreement to accept the irons which he flings to us now that he is dead. He is an obstacle to future events: how could a power issuing from the camps establish itself after him? Has he not killed all military glory by surpassing it? How could a free government come into being, when he has corrupted the principles of all liberty in men's hearts? No legitimate power is now able to drive the usurping spectre from the mind of man: the soldier and the citizen, the Republican and the Monarchist, the rich and the poor alike place busts and portraits of Napoleon in their homes, in their palaces or in their cottages; the former conquered are in agreement with the former conquerors; one cannot take a step in Italy without coming across him; one cannot enter Germany without meeting him, for in that country the young generation which rejected him is past. Generally, the centuries sit down before the portrait of a great man, they finish it by means of a long and successive work. This time, the human race has declined to wait: perhaps it was in too great a hurry to stump a crayon drawing. It is time to place the completed side of the idol in juxtaposition with the defective side.