he is charged with too many dirty jobs; however hardened his
conscience it has a tender spot; he discovers at last that he has
scruples. It is with great repugnance that, in February, 1814, he
executes the order to have a small infernal machine prepared, moving
by clock-work, so as to blow up the Bourbons on their return into
France.[69] "Ah," said he, giving himself a blow on the forehead, "it
must be admitted that the Emperor is sometimes hard to serve!"

If he exacts so much from the human creature, it is because, in
playing the game he has to play, he must absorb everything; in the
situation in which be has placed himself, caution is unnecessary. "Is
a statesman," said he, "made to have feeling? Is he not wholly an
eccentric personage, always alone by himself, he on one side and the
world on the other?"[70]

In this duel without truce or mercy, people interest him only whilst
they are useful to him; their value depends on what he can make out of
them; his sole business is to squeeze them, to extract to the last
drop whatever is available in them.

"I find very little satisfaction in useless sentiments," said he
again,[71] "and Berthier is so mediocre that I do not know why I waste
my time on him. And yet when I am not set against him, I am not sure
that I do not like him."

He goes no further. According to him, this indifference is necessary
in a statesman. The glass he looks through is that of his own
policy;[72] he must take care that it does not magnify or diminish
objects. - Therefore, outside of explosions of nervous sensibility,
"he has no consideration for men other than that of a foreman for his