Napoleon thought France was too small, that Europe should bow down to him.
But as soon as this idea took possession of his soul he became powerless, while he meditated the subjugation of Russia. He who holds the winds in his power, gathered the snows from the north and blew them upon his six hundred thousand men. They fled, they froze, they perished. And now the mighty Napoleon, who had resolved on universal dominion, is summoned to answer for the violation of that ancient law, “Thou shalt not covet anything which is thy neighbor’s.” And how is the mighty fallen! He beneath whose proud footstep Europe trembled, he is now an exile at Elba, and now, finally a prisoner on the rock of St. Helena, and there on a barren island, in an unfrequented sea, in the crater of an extinguished volcano, there is the death-bed of the mighty conqueror. And all his annexations have come to that! His last hour has now come, and he, the man of destiny, he who had rocked the world as in the throes of an earthquake, is now powerless—even as a beggar, so he died. On the wings of a tempest, that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior, another witness to the existence of that eternal decree, that they who do not rule in righteousness shall perish from the earth.
