those flatteners seem so many persons, or rather devouring animals.
Should you attempt to resist their force, they would annihilate you;
notwithstanding, all this apparent fury is calculated beforehand,
and a single mover gives action to these springs. The tyranny of
Bonaparte is represented to my eyes by this image; he makes
thousands of men perish, as these wheels beat the iron, and his
agents are the greater part of them equally insensible; the
invisible impulse of these human machines proceeds from a will at
once violent and methodical, which transforms moral life into its
servile instrument. Finally, to complete the comparison, it is
sufficient to seize the mover to restore every thing to a state of
repose.




CHAPTER 8.

Journey to Coppet.--Preliminaries of peace with England.


I went, according to my usual happy custom, to spend the summer with
my father. I found him extremely indignant at the state of affairs;
and as he had all his life been as much attached to real liberty as
he detested popular anarchy, he felt inclined to draw his pen
against the tyranny of one, after having so long fought against that
of the many. My father was fond of glory, and however prudent his
character, hazards of every kind did not displease him, when the
public esteem was to be deserved by incurring them, I was quite
sensible of the danger to which any work of his which should