This man lies as other men breathe.

He announces an honest intention; be on your guard: he makes an assertion, distrust him: he takes an oath, tremble.
Machiavel made small men; Louis Bonaparte is one of them.
To announce an enormity against which the world protests, to disavow it with indignation, to swear by all the gods, to declare himself an honest man,--and then, at the moment when people are reassured, and laugh at the enormity in question, to execute it.

This was his course with respect to the _coup d'etat_, with respect to the decrees of proscription, with respect to the spoliation of the Princes of Orleans;--and so it will be with the invasion of Belgium, and of Switzerland, and with everything else.

It is his way; you may think what you please of it; he employs it; he finds it effective; it is his affair.

He will have to settle the matter with history.
You are of his familiar circle; he hints at a project, which seems to you, not immoral,--one does not scrutinize so closely,--but insane and dangerous, and dangerous to himself; you raise objections; he listens, makes no reply, sometimes gives way for a day or two, then resumes his project, and carries out his will.
There is in his table, in his office at the Elysee, a drawer, frequently half open.