Well, we assert that we have taught France as much history about those five centuries and a half as any historian.
More than that; although our opinions are well known; although, under the Bourbons of the elder branch as under the Bourbons of the younger branch, under the Republic as under the present government, we have always proclaimed them loudly, we do not believe that that opinion has been unduly manifested in our books and dramas.
We admire the Marquis de Posa in Schiller's "Don Carlos"; but, in his stead, we should not have anticipated the spirit of that age to the point of placing a philosopher of the eighteenth century among the heroes of the sixteenth, an encyclopedist at the court of Philippe II.
Therefore, just as we have been--in literary parlance--monarchical under the Monarchy, republican under the Republic, we are to-day reconstructionists under the Consulate.
That does not prevent our thought from hovering above men, above their epoch, and giving to each the share of good and evil they do.

Now that share no one, except God, has the right to award from his individual point of view.

The kings of Egypt who, at the moment they passed into the unknown, were judged upon the threshold of their tombs, were not judged by a man, but by a people.

That is why it is said: "The judgment of a people is the judgment of God." Historian, novelist, poet, dramatic author, we are nothing more than the foreman of a jury who impartially sums up the arguments and leaves the jury to give their verdict.

The book is the summing up; the readers are the jury.
That is why, having to paint one of the most gigantic figures, not only of modern times but of all times; having to paint the period of his transition, that is to say the moment when Bonaparte transformed himself into Napoleon, the general into an emperor--that is why we say, in the fear of becoming unjust, we abandon interpretations and substitute facts.
We are not of those who say with Voltaire that, "no one is a hero to his valet." It may be that the valet is near-sighted or envious--two infirmities that resemble each other more closely than people think.