It requires a complex environment to develop a man of any sort; for the exhibition of his personality and identity he must live in family, church, and state, and beyond all these surroundings even the meanest of mankind is subject to some cosmopolitan influence. How much more true is this of a historical and political personage, who is and can be himself only under the conditions which permit the play of his powers. Removed from these, his soul and spirit sicken, his character becomes morbid, his capacities are crippled, his identity is distorted. Nothing could be more fatuous and simple than the effort to read the true character of Napoleon Bonaparte from his talk and behavior when an exile; a prisoner of time and space, as world communications then were; an exhausted body; a crippled, outraged spirit, reduced for attack and defense to the weapons of the pen and the tongue wielded on and over an immensity of apartness. Yet exactly this has been the self-imposed task of many investigators and writers. The literature of his prison-house has grown to vast dimensions, and readers feel cheated when the bald outline of all that may even be considered history is offered for their consideration. The narrative of the St. Helena epoch in his life just given is probably accurate, and there are portions of it that rest on historical evidence both objective and internal, as trustworthy as most of what passes for history. But when this is said the statement must be carefully guarded, for the reason that substantially all our evidence is virtually such as would be given about himself by a convict behind the bars, his sympathizing accomplices, his jailer, and his prosecutors. The simile is not strained. The surgeon of the _Northumberland_, ignorant of French, gathered from those of Napoleon's attendants who spoke English such scraps regarding the prisoner as he could, published them, and lost his government employment. The book was widely read and proved a very lucrative enterprise. Outside its pages there was profound silence and complete ignorance in Europe regarding the now mysterious convict, buried to the world. Craving for information was universal and insatiate; if only Napoleon himself would speak! It appeared as if the longing were satisfied in a published "Manuscript arrived from St. Helena by unknown means." The volume was difficult to procure, although edition followed edition in swift succession; many a precious copy was used in reading circles and there are still in existence a considerable number of the very numerous reproductions made at the time with pen and ink. One of these was actually sold not long ago to an unsuspecting editor in the United States and published in his magazine as a rarity. It fell flat because so many knew the truth: that it was apocryphal, the merry jest of a Genevese gentleman, Lullin de Chateauvieux, who lived to see his sport a dangerous element in the falsification of history.