makes bashfulness somewhat ridiculous. The bashful man rather gives the impression of a person embarrassed by his body, looking round for some convenient cloak-room in which to deposit it.
This is just why the tragic poet is so careful to avoid anything calculated to attract attention to the material side of his heroes. No sooner does anxiety about the body manifest itself than the intrusion of a comic element is to be feared. On this account, the hero in a tragedy does not eat or drink or warm himself. He does not even sit down any more than can be helped. To sit down in the middle of a fine speech would imply that you remembered you had a body. Napoleon, who was a psychologist when he wished to be so, had noticed that the transition from tragedy to comedy is effected simply by sitting down. In the Journal inédit of Baron Gourgaud—when speaking of an interview with the Queen of Prussia after the battle of Iéna—he expresses himself in the following terms: "She received me in tragic fashion like Chimène: justice! Sire, Justice! Magdeburg! Thus she continued in a way most embarrassing to me.
