Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/57

Rh future of the soul still remains; and as he cannot make a new Eastern Empire and a new Koran, he must get at Europe through the Pope. The Pope must give up Rome and come to live in Paris permanently. And then the Pope will rule the conscience of the world, and Napoleon will rule the Pope. "Paris would become the capital of the Christian world, and I would have governed the religious world as well as the political world."

I put down all this not merely to the insatiable love of power, but to profound, unfathomable contempt for mankind, which made it delightful to the imagination of Napoleon to think of their grovelling in their folly before him long after he had gone. Here is a further example of this spirit:

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 to the conquerors of antiquity! Take Alexander! After having conquered Asia, and proclaimed himself to the people 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, there is not an old beldame that would not hoot at me