and, "Nothing can efface that from my souvenirs. It is as if he had
told an impassioned lover that he had slept with his mistress, or
merely that he hoped to succeed with her. My mistress is power. I
have worked too hard to obtain her, to let her be ravished from me, or
even suffer anybody to covet her." This ambition, as avid as it is
jealous, which becomes exasperated at the very idea of a rival, feels
hampered by the mere idea of setting a limit to it; however vast the
acquired power, he would like to have it still more vast; on quitting
the most copious banquet, he still remains insatiate. On the day
after the coronation he said to Decrés:[51]

"I come too late, there is no longer anything great to accomplish. I
admit that my career is brilliant and that I have made my way
successfully. But what a difference alongside of antiquity! Take
Alexander! After having conquered Asia, and proclaimed himself to the
people as the son of Jupiter, with the exception of Olympias, who knew
what all this meant, and Aristotle, and a few Athenian pedants, the
entire Orient believed him. Very well, should I now declare that I was
the son of God Almighty, and proclaim that I am going to worship him
under this title, every market woman would hoot at me as I walked
along the streets. People nowadays know too much. Nothing is left to
do."

And yet, even on this secluded, elevated domain, and which twenty
centuries of civilization keeps inaccessible, he still encroaches, and
to the utmost, in a roundabout way, by laying his hand on the Church,
and next on the Pope; here, as elsewhere, he takes all he can get.
Nothing in his eyes, is more natural; he has a right to it, because he
is the only capable one.