Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/190

162 had paid her last debt and released the expiring soldiers from their agony."

As his auditors did not look convinced of the correctness of his views, Napoleon turned to Dr. O'Meara, who was of the party.

"I ask you, O'Meara, to place yourself in the situation of one of these men. Were it demanded of you which fate you would select, either to be left to suffer the tortures of those miscreants or to have opium administered to you, which fate would you rather choose? If my own son—and I believe I love my son as well as any father loves his child—were in a similar situation, I should advise it to be done. If so situated myself I should insist upon it, if I had sense enough and strength to demand it."

Without waiting for comment from the others, Napoleon added that if he had been capable of secretly poisoning his soldiers or of the barbarity ascribed to him of driving his carriage over the mutilated bodies of the wounded, his troops would never have fought under him with the enthusiasm and reverence they uniformly displayed. No, no, I should have been shot long ago. Even my wounded