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Book, page 72 / 124 in those enterprises, were infinite. Says Napoleon, with that magnanimity which history should recognize and applaud, "We are told that all the First Consul has to look to, was to do justice. But to whom was he to do justice? To the proprietors whom the revolution had violently despoiled of their properties, for this only, that they had been faithful to their legitimate sovereign to the principle of honor which they had inherited from their ancestors; or to those new proprietors, who had purchased these domains, adventuring their money on the faith of laws flowing from an illegitimate authority? Was he to do justice to those royalist soldiers, mutilated in the fields of Germany, La Vendee, and Quiberon, arrayed under the white standard of the Bourbons, in the firm belief that they were serving the cause of their king against a usurping tyranny; or to the million of citizens, who, forming around the frontiers a wall of brass, had so often saved their country from the inveterate hostility of its enemies, and had borne to so transcendent a height the glory of the French eagle? Was he to do justice to that clergy, the model and the example of every Christian virtue, stripped of its birthright, the reward of fifteen hundred years of benevolence; or to the recent acquires, who had converted the convents into workshops, the churches into warehouses, and had turned to profane uses all that had been deemed most holy for ages?" "At this period," says Theirs, "Napoleon appeared so moderate, after having been so victorious, he showed himself so profound a legislator, after having proved himself so great a commander, he evinced so much love for the arts of peace, after having excelled in the arts of war, that well might he excite illusions in France and in the world. Only some few among the parsonages who were admitted to his councils, who were capable of judging futurity by the present, were filled with as much anxiety as admiration, on witnessing the indefatigable activity of his mind and body, and the energy of his will, and the impetuosity of his desires. They trembled even at seeing him do good, in the way he did--so impatient was he to accomplish it quickly, and upon an immense scale. The wise and sagacious Tronchet, who both admired and loved him, and looked upon him as the savior of France, said, nevertheless, one day in a tone of deep feeling to Cambracers, 'This young man begins like Caesar: I fear that he will end like him.`"
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