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48 civilian surroundings. A good deal of this is doubtless due to the fact that all his training had been in the guard-room and at mess, and many of his acts and expressions have the fine, full-flavoured tone of the soldier. Hence his dislike to all the conventions of society. Says Taine:

"It is because good taste is the highest attainment of civilisation, the innermost vestment which drapes human nudity, which best fits the person, the last garment retained after the others have been cast off, and whose delicate tissue continues to hamper Napoleon: he throws it off instinctively, because it interferes with his natural utterance, with the uncurbed, dominating, savage ways of the conqueror who knocks down his adversary and treats him as he pleases."

Napoleon himself was not slow to avow with characteristic frankness his feelings on the subject.

I stand apart from other men. I accept nobody's conditions, nor any species of obligation, no code whatever, not even the common code of outward civility, which, diminishing or dissimulating brutality, allows men to associate together without clashing.' He does not comprehend it, and he repudiates it. 'I have little liking,' he says, 'for that vague, levelling word politeness, which you people fling out whenever you have a chance. It is an invention of fools who want to surpass clever men; a kind of social muzzle which annoys