AND NOW was to be exemplified the vanity of worldly ambition. The mighty monarch’s train was reduced to a few attendants, and his territory to a plot of garden ground.
He, who had made so many widows and orphans, was himself deprived of his wife and son. The schemes to which his active mind turned for recreation proved abortive. “Let us live on the past!” he exclaimed. But the retrospect exhibited only a course of selfish aggrandizement. He sickened and pined for death.
“Why,” he would ask, “did the cannon balls spare me to die in this manner? I am no longer the great Napoleon.” “How fallen I am!” He would at other times exclaim: “I, whose activity was boundless, whose mind never slumbered, am plunged in lethargic stupor, and must make an effort to raise my eyelids. I sometimes dictated upon different subjects to four or five secretaries, who wrote as fast as words could be uttered; but then I was Napoleon. Now I am no longer anything. My strength, my faculties forsake me. I do not live; I merely exist.”
At other times his reflections took a religious turn: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love, and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth to become food for the worms. Such is the fate which so soon awaits him who has been called the Great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and which is extending over the whole earth?”
With the failure of his health, his spirits also drooped. Some fishes in a pond in his garden had attracted his notice; a harmful substance happened to mix with the water; they sickened and died. “Everything that I love,” says Napoleon, “everything that belongs to me, is stricken. Heaven and mankind unite to afflict me."...
Soon afterward he died. A narrow grave, overhung by a weeping willow, long marked the spot where the remains of the mighty conqueror rosed.
Such was Napoleon Bonaparte; the possessor of talents of the highest order, of power the most unbounded, of opportunities of usefulness the most varied. Every element of human happiness had been within his reach; but all, without the Divine blessing, had proved unsubstantial as a Mirage.
“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Matt. 14:26.
“Not many wise men... not many mighty... not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things... the weak things... and base things... and things which are despised, hath God chosen,... that no flesh should glory in His presence.” 1 Cor. 1:26-29.
“FOR WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN, IF HE SHALL GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD, AND LOSE HIS OWN SOUL?” Mark 8:36.
“SOME TRUST IN CHARIOTS, AND SOME IN HORSES: BUT WE WILL REMEMBER THE NAME OF THE LORD OUR GOD.” Psalm 20:7.
“KNOWING THE TIME, THAT NOW IT IS HIGH TIME TO AWAKE OUT OF SLEEP: FOR NOW IS OUR SALVATION NEARER THAN WHEN WE BIEVED.” Romans 13:11.
ML-01/28/1962