Napoleon's Dominant Passion: Power.
His mastery of the will of others .-- Degree of submission required by him .-- His mode of appreciating others and of profiting by them .-- Tone of command and of conversation.
We at last confront his dominant passion, the inward abyss into which instinct, education, reflection, and theory have plunged him, and which is to engulf the proud edifice of his fortune--I mean, his ambition.

It is the prime motor of his soul and the permanent substance of his will, so profound that he no longer distinguishes between it and himself, and of which he is sometimes unconscious.
"I," said he to Roederer,[1248] "I have no ambition," and then, recollecting himself, he adds, with his ordinary lucidity, "or, if I have any, it is so natural to me, so innate, so intimately associated with my existence, that it is like the blood which flows in my veins and the atmosphere I breathe."-- Still more profoundly, he likens it to that unconscious, savage, and irresistible emotion which vibrates the soul from one end to the other, to this universal thrill moving all living beings, animal or moral, to those keen and terrible tremors which we call the passion of love.
"I have but one passion,[1249] one mistress, and that is France.

I sleep with her.

She has never been false to me.

She lavishes her blood and treasures on me.