“(That name) has possessed the world,” Napoleon continues.
“And it maintains its possession.
Amid the most varied nations under the most diversified circumstances, in the most cultivated and in the rudest races and intellects, in all classes of society, the owner of that great name reigns.
High and low, rich and poor, acknowledge him.
Millions of souls are conversing with him, are venturing on his word, are looking for his presence.
Palaces sumptuous and innumerable are raised to his honor; his image, as in the hour of his deepest humiliation, is triumphantly displayed in the proud city, in the open country, in the corners of streets, on the tops of mountains.
It sanctions the ancestral hall, the closet, and the bedchamber, it is the subject for the exercise of the highest genius in the imitative arts.”
Raymond J. de Souza, Conrad Black, history of the world, Napoleon quote, “magnificent”