A
patient, and an easy interlocutor, he was a home questioner, and he
could listen--a rare talent in the grandees of the earth. He carried
with him into battle a cool and impassable courage. Never was mind so
deeply meditative, more fertile in rapid and sudden illuminations. On
becoming Emperor he ceased not to be the soldier. If his activity
decreased with the progress of age, that was owing to the decrease of
his physical powers. In games of mingled calculation and hazard the
greater the advantages which a man seeks to obtain the greater risks he
must run. It is precisely this that renders the deceitful science of
conquerors so calamitous to nations.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON.]
Napoleon, though naturally adventurous, was not deficient in consistency
or method; and he wasted neither his soldiers nor his treasures where
the authority of his name sufficed. What he could obtain by negotiations
or by artifice, he required not by force of arms. The sword, although
drawn from the scabbard, was not stained with blood unless it was
impossible to attain the end in view by a manoeuvre. Always ready to
fight, he chose habitually the occasion and the ground: out of fifty
battles which he fought, he was the assailant in at least forty.
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