supremacy; he is afraid, and makes no attempt of concealment. After borrowing the uniform of an Austrian colonel, the casque of a Prussian quartermaster, and the cloak of a Russian quarter-master, he still considers that he is not sufficiently disguised. In the inn at Calade 'he starts and changes colour at the slightest noise;' the commissioners, who repeatedly enter the room, 'find him always in tears.' 'He wearies them with his anxieties and irresolution;' he says the French Government would like to have him assassinated on the road, refuses to eat for fear of poison, and thinks that he might escape by jumping out of the window. And yet he gives vent to his feelings and lets his tongue run on about himself, without stopping, concerning his past, his character, unreservedly, indelicately, trivially, like a cynic and one who is half crazy. His ideas run loose and crowd each other like the anarchical gatherings of a tumultuous mob; he does not recover his mastery of them until he reaches Fréjus, the end of his journey, where he feels himself safe and protected from any highway assault. Then only do they return within ordinary limits, and fall back in regular line under the control of the sovereign intellect, which after sinking for a time, revives and resumes its ascendency."
This strange, tasteless loquacity of Napoleon—without dignity, self-respect, or decency—is one of
