explosions, in which the roar and flashes of tempest lasted longer and
of which the effects were more irresistible. In his mind no idea
remains speculative and pure; none is a simple transcript of the real,
or a simple picture of the possible; each is an internal eruption,
which suddenly and spontaneously spends itself in action; each darts
forth to its goal and would reach it without stopping were it not kept
back and restrained by force[2] Sometimes, the eruption is so sudden,
that the restraint does not come soon enough. One day, in Egypt,[3]
on entertaining a number of French ladies at dinner, he has one of
them, who was very pretty and whose husband he had just sent off to
France, placed alongside of him; suddenly, as if accidentally, he
overturns a pitcher of water on her, and, under the pretence of
enabling her to rearrange her wet dress, he leads her into another
room where he remains with her a long time, too long, while the other
guests seated at the table wait quietly and exchange glances. Another
day, at Paris, toward the epoch of the Concordat,[4] he says to
Senator Volney: "France wants a religion." Volney replies in a frank,
sententious way, "France wants the Bourbons." Whereupon he gives
Volney a kick in the stomach and he falls unconscious; on being moved
to a friend's house, he remains there ill in bed for several days. -
No man is more irritable, so soon in a passion; and all the more
because he purposely gives way to his irritation; for, doing this just
at the right moment, and especially before witnesses, it strikes
terror; it enables him to extort concessions and maintain obedience.
His explosions of anger, half-calculated, half-involuntary, serve him
quite as much as they relieve him, in public as well as in private,
with strangers as with intimates, before constituted bodies, with the
Pope, with cardinals, with ambassadors, with Talleyrand, with Beugnot,
with anybody that comes along,[5] whenever he wishes to set an example
or "keep the people around him on the alert." The public and the army