On the day after the coronation he said to Decres:[1251] "I come too late, there is no longer anything great to accomplish.
I admit that my career is brilliant and that I have made my way successfully.

But what a difference alongside of antiquity! Take Alexander! After having conquered Asia, and proclaimed himself to the people as the son of Jupiter, with the exception of Olympias, who knew what all this meant, and Aristotle, and a few Athenian pedants, the entire Orient believed him.

Very well, should I now declare that I was the son of God Almighty, and proclaim that I am going to worship him under this title, every market woman would hoot at me as I walked along the streets.

People nowadays know too much.

Nothing is left to do." And yet, even on this secluded, elevated domain, and which twenty centuries of civilization keeps inaccessible, he still encroaches, and to the utmost, in a roundabout way, by laying his hand on the Church, and next on the Pope; here, as elsewhere, he takes all he can get.
Nothing in his eyes, is more natural; he has a right to it, because he is the only capable one.
"My Italian people[1252] must know me well enough not to forget that there is more in my little finger than in all their brains put together." Alongside of him, they are children, "minors," the French also, and likewise the rest of mankind.