Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/306

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Napoleon.

what little traces of democracy there might have been in him were destroyed by what he then saw. It is known that he saw the march on the Tuileries on June 2Oth. When he saw the ragged and fierce crowd going in the direction of the Palace, "Let us follow these scoundrels," was his comment. And when the poor King put on the red cap he was equally disgusted. "Why did they allow these brutes to come in? They ought to have shot down fifty or sixty of them with cannon, and the rest would have run."

This youthful cynic has already weighed and found wanting the men who are at the head of affairs. "You know those who are at the head," he writes to his brother Joseph, "are the poorest of men. The people are equally contemptible when one comes in contact with them. They are hardly worth all the trouble men take to earn their favour." "You know the history of Ajaccio," he continues; "that of Paris is exactly the same, only that there, perhaps, men are more petted, more spiteful, more censorious." And finally here is his judgment of the French people as a whole―a judgment given, it will be observed, with the detachment and with the calm contempt of a foreigner: "The French people is an old people, without prejudices, without bonds. Every one seeks his own interest, and wishes to rise by means of lying and calumny; men intrigue more contemptibly than ever." And finally, from this