Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/21

Rh "At Paris, towards the end of the Concordat, 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 his being conveyed to a friend's house he remains there ill 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; while his explosions of anger, half calculated, half involuntary, serve him quite as much as they relieve him, in public 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, whenever he wishes to set an example or 'keep the people around him on the alert.

His unfortunate wife is one of the greatest victims of this violence, and even at the moment when she has most right to complain.

"At St. Cloud, caught by Josephine in an act of gallantry, he springs after the unlucky intruder in such a way that she has barely time to escape; and, again, that evening, keeping up his fury, so as to put her down completely, 'he treats her in the most outrageous manner,