The Legendary and the Real Napoleon. an Occult Study
: THE LEGENDARY AND THE REAL NAPOLEON AN OCCULT STUDY. BY HDNRY RIDGELY EVANS. "The real hero of modern legend, the legend that towers above the whole century, is Napoleon."—Marc Debrit Inter. Quar., Vol. VI., No. i. Sept.— Dec, 1902. "After Marengo, you are the hero of Europe, the man of Providence, J anointed of the Lord; after Auster- ' litz, Napoleon the Great; after Water- loo, the Coisican ogre."'—Victor Hugo: IVilUaiii Shakespeare. IT has been the fate of the great historical personages—warriors, priests, poets, kings and reformers—to have woven about thetn a tissue of myths and fables. Miraculous stories have grown up about the Christ, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Zoroaster, Pytha- goras, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and Napoleon I, entirely obscuring the true characters of these great men. They remind one of the interminable bandages wrapt about the Egyptian mummy. One has to unwind these cerement cloths in order to get a view of the body—to see it in its staring nakedness. It is, then, the duty of the student of history to dissipate these myths and fanciful stories, to treat men as real beings, and not as demi-gods. Let us take Napoleon I as an example. There is a Napoleonic legend that persists in spite of the iconoclastic efforts of modern historians to destroy it. Like Banquo's ghost it will not dozvn. The name of Napoleon is still one to conjure with. We make pilgrimages to his tomb, under the gilded dome of the Invalides, and offer up our devotions to the ashes of the dead hero.
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