THE BUONAPARTES

"Napoleon the Third was not much. He died in England, and was buried in
a country church-yard much the same as Kiltartan. But Napoleon the First
was a great man; it was given out of him there never would be so great a
man again. But he hadn't much education, and his penmanship was bad.
Every great man gave in to superstition. He gave into it when he went to
ask the gipsy woman to divine, and she told him his fate. Through fire
and a rock she said that he would fall. I suppose the rock was St.
Helena, and the fire was the fire of Waterloo. Napoleon was the terror
of England, and he would have beat the English at Waterloo but for
treachery, the treachery of Grouchy. It was, maybe, not his fault he was
treacherous, he might be the same as Judas, that had his treachery
settled for him four thousand years before his birth. There was a curse
on Napoleon the Third because of what Napoleon the First had done
against the Church. He took Malta one time and landed there, and by
treachery with the knights he robbed a church that was on the shore, and
carried away the golden gates. In an ironclad he put them that was
belonging to the English, and they sank that very day, and were never
got up after, unless it might be by divers. And two Popes he brought
into exile. But he was the friend of Ireland, and when he was dying he
said that. His heart was smashed, he said, with all the ruling Princes
that went against him; and if he had made an attack on Ireland, he said,
instead of going to Moscow the time he did, he would have brought
England low. And the Prince Imperial was trapped. It was the English
brought him out to the war, and that made the nations go against him,
and it was an English officer led him into the trap the way he never
would come to the Throne."