Read the lives of the Borgias, the Sforzas, the
Medicis, and of all the lustful, cruel, broad-minded, art-loving,
talented despots of the little Italian States, including Genoa,
from which the Buonapartes migrated. There at once you get the
real descent of the man, with all the stigmata clear upon him--the
outward calm, the inward passion, the layer of snow above the
volcano, everything which characterized the old despots of his
native land, the pupils of Machiavelli, but all raised to the
dimensions of genius. You can whitewash him as you may, but you
will never get a layer thick enough to cover the stain of that
cold-blooded deliberate endorsement of his noble adversary's
assassination.
Another book which gives an extraordinarily vivid picture of the
man is this one--the Memoirs of Madame de Remusat. She was in daily
contact with him at the Court, and she studied him with those quick
critical eyes of a clever woman, the most unerring things in life
when they are not blinded by love. If you have read those pages, you
feel that you know him as if you had yourself seen and talked with
him. His singular mixture of the small and the great, his huge sweep
of imagination, his very limited knowledge, his intense egotism, his
impatience of obstacles, his boorishness, his gross impertinence to
women, his diabolical playing upon the weak side of every one with
whom he came in contact--they make up among them one of the most
striking of historical portraits.
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