XIX.
HIPPOLYTE CHARLES.
Among the officers of the army of Italy, when Napoleon was Commander-in-Chief, was a young man named Hippolyte Charles. I suppose there is nothing more curious—nor inexplicable—in some respects more saddening, in others more satisfactory, than the difficulty the greatest men of history have found in gaining real and faithful love. George Eliot in one of her early stories stands up for the man, with poor stumbling gait and commonplace mind, who wins the love of some woman far superior to himself; and asks whether the straight-limbed young gods have not enough from life without begrudging to the poor devil, who is neither fair of form nor brilliant of mind, the great good the gods have given him of a perfect woman's devotion. Catherine of Russia had wondrous charm in addition to her vast gifts of courage, resolve, clear vision—and yet Catherine, as her biographer tells us, was as much deceived by the various men on whom she bestowed so profusely the riches of her own nature and of her Empire, as the veriest grisette. And, similarly, Napoleon—the god of his own time, the god of so many successive generations of men—Napoleon never succeeded until it was too late in winning the devotion of his own wife. And to make the
