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Ch. XIX.]
the Emperor Napoleon.
221

miscreants, or to have opium administered to you, which would you rather choose? If my own son, and I believe I love my son as well as any father does his child, were in a similar situation, I would advise it to be done; and if so situated myself, I would insist upon it, if I had sense enough and strength to demand it. Do you think if I had been capable of secretly poisoning my soldiers, or of such barbarities, (as have been ascribed to me,) of driving my carriage over the mutilated and bleeding bodies of the wounded, that my troops would have fought under me with the enthusiasm and affection they uniformly displayed? No, no; I should have been shot long ago; even my wounded would have tried to pull a trigger to despatch me."

It is be regretted that the conscience of Napoleon did not prompt him to feel or say with Richard III.,

"E'en all mankind to some lov'd ills incline;
Great men choose greater things, ambition 's mine."