The effects underlying his energy and his imagination are dominated by the clarity of his thought. Napoleon hated less, and loved more, than he would have been willing to admit. In this domain, we find the converse of what happens in the matter of his sympathies in war time, when a million men are coldly sacrificed, while one man wounded and bleeding touches him to the heart. Since his fantasy needs enormous masses, he is enraged when Joseph says: “I am the only person who cares for you.” Napoleon rejoins: “Nothing of the sort. I need five hundred million men to love me.” In these icy words glows the volcano which one of his school masters heard rumbling long ago.

Emotionally convinced of his mission to order the affairs of the nations, he deliberately rejects anything that may distract him from this aim, and nothing sustains him but his monomania. Even in the drama, he objects to the interweaving of love stories, saying: “Love is a passion which should only be the main theme of a tragedy, and never a subsidiary motif.... In the days of Racine, it was the whole content of a human life. That happens in a society where no great deeds are being done.”

If love becomes intrusive, he annuls it. “I have no time to be bothered with feelings and to repent them like other men.... There are two motives to action: self-interest and fear. Believe me, love is a foolish blindness!... I love no one, not even my brothers—Joseph a little, from force of habit, and because he is the elder. I am fond of Duroc, too; he is serious and resolute; I believe the man has never shed tears in his life!... Let us leave sensibilities to women. Men should be firm of heart and strong of will, or else they should have nothing to do with war or governance.” Another time: “The only friend I have is Daru; he is unfeeling and cold; that suits me.” Last of all, in St. Helena: “A man of fifty has done with love.... I have an iron heart. I never really loved; perhaps Josephine, a little; but then I was only seven-and-twenty. I incline to the view of Gassion, who once said to me that he did not love life well enough to give it to another being.”

Always half ashamed of his feelings; ever ready to make excuses for them; “perhaps,” “a little.” Yet this is the same man who said: “I am the slave of my way of feeling and acting, for I value the heart much more than the head.” This very feeling is his fantasy.

One in whom egotism is supreme, will be more inclined to jealousy than to love. His first letters to Josephine show him devoured by jealousy. Years later, as Consul, when he is inspecting his new bridge in course of construction across the Seine, he has to step aside with his companions for a moment to let a carriage pass. In the carriage sits Hippolyte, his sometime rival. That was long ago; everything has been condoned; the man’s name is never mentioned in his presence. But now, at a chance encounter in the street, Bonaparte grows pale and confused, and takes a little while to recover composure.

From time to time, he shows an involuntary kindliness. On one of the Italian battle-fields, he sees a dog howling over the dead body of its master. “The poor beast seemed to be asking for an avenger, or begging help. I was profoundly moved by the dog’s suffering, and at that moment I should have been very much in the mood to grant quarter to an enemy. I understood why Achilles surrendered Hector’s body to the weeping Priam. Such is man; so little can he count upon his moods. Impassively I had sent my soldiers into the battle; dry-eyed I had watched them marching past in an advance where thousands of them would meet their fate; then I was shaken to the depths by the howling of a dog.”

Affectionate tones are to be heard in many of his letters. To Cambacérès: “I am so sorry to hear that you are not well. I hope it is only a passing trouble. If you did not take so much medicine, you would be better already.... But anyhow, you must do your utmost to get well, if only because of my friendship for you.” To Corvisart: “Dear Doctor, I wish you would see to the arch-chancellor and to Lacépède: the former has been ailing for a week, and I am afraid he is in the hands of a quack; Lacépède’s wife has been ill for some time. Give them the benefit of your advice, and cure them as soon as you can. You will save the life of a man of note, and one who is very dear to me.”

Chénier, who has written against him for years, is assisted by him in poverty and given a secure position. Carnot, for ten years an enemy of the Emperor, is heavily in debt; Napoleon learns this, settles the debts, and refuses to hear of being given a note of hand; reckons up the pay which Carnot would have received as general in active service, makes this calculation the basis of a large pension; and when Carnot says he would like to do some work for his money, Napoleon commissions him to write a military treatise, lest his pensioner should have to undertake duties that might go against the grain.

During the Hundred Days, learning that some of the Bourbon princes are greatly distressed for lack of money, he sends them large sums anonymously. On one occasion his secretary is asleep, and he himself has nothing particular to do; he looks through a pile of begging letters, and writes in the margin of each the amount of an allowance which is to be given to the sender. Hundreds of officers whom, in fits of anger, he has sworn to have shot, remain at their posts—to forsake him in the end. When he orders Jerome to get a divorce, he is alarmed at his own harshness. After he has written to enforce his command with threats he sends a letter to his mother saying that she had better write to Jerome at once and get his sisters to write as well, “for if I have passed judgment on him, nothing can alter it, and his life will be spoiled.”

From his few friends, he demands blind devotion. Never is the self-centred nature of Napoleon more plainly shown than in the words the exile speaks to Montholon, from whom he has been temporarily estranged: “I love you like a son, for I believe that you love me only; otherwise you could not love me at all. According to my way of feeling, it is not in our nature to love several persons at once. People deceive themselves in these matters; they cannot even love all their children with the same intensity. For my part, at any rate, I want to be the supreme object of affection in the case of those whom I love and honour with my confidence. I cannot bear partings. They stab me to the heart, for my disposition is too sensitive; spiritual poison affects the body more powerfully than arsenic.”

Logically enough, he dislikes western views concerning the enlightenment of women. He always hankers after the East, and in this matter he is an oriental. “Nature intended women to be our slaves; and it is only because of our distorted outlooks that they venture to describe themselves as our rulers.... For one who can influence us in a good direction, there are a hundred who will only lead us into follies.... What a mad idea to demand equality for women! They are our property, we are not theirs; for they give us children, but we do not give them any. They belong to us, just as a tree which bears fruit belongs to the gardener.... In this difference, there is nothing degrading; every one has his privileges, and every one his duties. You, ladies, have beauty, attractiveness; but also dependence.”