Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/61

 Empire, there arose that extraordinary legend which in the eyes of a large section of the French people transformed Napoleon into the champion of liberty and peace, is one of the most interesting psychological problems in history. Such an audacious fiction could have little hold on the generation which had known the Emperor. But the generation which followed was in a manner nursed in this fiction, and it stuck to it. It was this that made the nation so ready to restore the Empire and help Napoleon III. to the throne. The captivity of St. Helena, the silence of the death on that rock hidden in the wastes of the great sea — these things were so impressive an end to Napoleon's tragic destiny that they at once threw over him the glamour of a half-mythical hero in the popular imagination. That great memory served the interests of party too well for the opposition to miss the chance of appropriating it to its own ends. Unfortunately the opposition preached the benefits of liberty, and Napoleon had been a despot ; the opposition tended to fraternity among the nations, and Napoleon had been their oppressor. But there are ways of squaring the truth. Somebody made the great discovery that