All that three years before seemed
inalienable from his person, was now reversed. The victor was defeated,
the monarch was dethroned, the ransomer of prisoners was in captivity,
the general was deserted by his soldiers, the master abandoned by his
domestics, the brother parted from his brethren, the husband severed
from the wife, and the father torn from his only child. To console him
for the fairest and largest empire that ambition ever lorded it over, he
had, with the mock name of emperor, a petty isle, to which he was to
retire, accompanied by the pity of such friends as dared express their
feelings, the unrepressed execrations of many of his former subjects,
who refused to regard his present humiliation as an amends for what he
had made them suffer during his power, and the ill-concealed triumph of
the enemies into whose hands he had been delivered.
A Roman would have seen, in these accumulated disasters, a hint to
direct his sword's point against his breast; a man of better faith would
have turned his eye back on his own conduct, and having read, in his
misuse of prosperity, the original source of those calamities, would
have remained patient and contrite under the consequences of his
ambition. Napoleon belonged to the Roman school of philosophy; and it is
confidently reported, especially by Baron Fain, his secretary, though it
has not been universally believed, that he designed, at this extremity,
to escape from life by an act of suicide.
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