that the picture makes me feel a higher respect for his character. There is something essentially vulgar, and perhaps even a little brutal, in it all. Underneath it all lies the idea which pervades his whole existence—which is the basis of all his philosophy—which makes him in many respects the truest type of the Mephistopheles that real life has created—namely, the contempt and the disbelief in everything in human nature except its low baseness and its selfishness. He wants to win the heart of a young woman. "Come, jewellers, architects, dressmakers, pastry-cooks, and prepare all your wares to set before her. Her vanity, her gluttony, her love of all creature comforts—these are the only things in her which I know; and as for her passions, the only way by which I can safeguard her and myself from her longing to gratify them is by shutting her up in a French harem"—this is the language he really holds to himself about this young girl. If she has a soul, or a heart, Napoleon either does not know or care for their existence. To him at least they have no reality. Has this woman affections? She has, as a matter of fact, plenty of affection, for it is related of her that she sends to her father, her stepmother, and her brothers and sister everything she can extract out of all those brilliant presents which her husband is showering upon her—articles of toilet, furniture, books, precious bits of china—amounting
