In his personality there is a complex blending of force and grace, of animal passion and mental clearness, of northern common sense with the promptings of an oriental imagination; and this union in his nature of seeming opposites explains many of the mysteries of his life.
Fortunately for lovers of romance, genius cannot be wholly analyzed, even by the most adroit historical philosophizer or the most exacting champion of heredity.

But in so far as the sources of Napoleon's power can be measured, they may be traced to the unexampled needs of mankind in the revolutionary epoch and to his own exceptional endowments.
Evidently, then, the characteristics of his family claim some attention from all who would understand the man and the influence which he was to wield over modern Europe.
It has been the fortune of his House to be the subject of dispute from first to last.

Some writers have endeavoured to trace its descent back to the Caesars of Rome, others to the Byzantine Emperors; one genealogical explorer has tracked the family to Majorca, and, altering its name to Bonpart, has discovered its progenitor in the Man of the Iron Mask; while the Duchesse d'Abrantes, voyaging eastwards in quest of its ancestors, has confidently claimed for the family a Greek origin.

Painstaking research has dispelled these romancings of historical _trouveurs_, and has connected this enigmatic stock with a Florentine named "William, who in the year 1261 took the surname of _Bonaparte_ or _Buonaparte_.

The name seems to have been assumed when, amidst the unceasing strifes between Guelfs and Ghibellines that rent the civic life of Florence, William's party, the Ghibellines, for a brief space gained the ascendancy.