To the former Napoleon granted a lengthy interview.

He flattered the aged poet at the outset by the words, "You are a man": he then talked about several works in a way that Goethe thought very just; and he criticised one passage of the poet's youthful work, "Werther," as untrue to nature, with which Goethe agreed.

On Voltaire's "Mahomet" he heaped censure, for its unworthy portraiture of the conqueror of the East and its ineffective fatalism.
"These pieces belong to an obscure age.

Besides, what do they mean with their fatalism?
Politics is fatalism." The significance of this saying was soon to be emphasized, so that misapprehension was impossible.

After witnessing Voltaire's "La Mort de Cesar," Napoleon suggested that the poet ought to write a tragedy in a grander style than Voltaire's, so as to show how the world would have benefited if the great Roman had had time to carry out his vast plans.
Finally, Goethe was invited to come to Paris, where he would find abundant materials for his poetic creations.