) Would you have been afraid?
LADY. Oh, horribly afraid, agonizingly afraid. (She presses her
hands on her heart.) It hurts only to imagine it.
NAPOLEON (inflexibly). Would you have come for the despatches?
LADY (overcome by the imagined horror). Don't ask me. I must have
come.
NAPOLEON. Why?
LADY. Because I must. Because there would have been no other way.
NAPOLEON (with conviction). Because you would have wanted my
letter enough to bear your fear. There is only one universal
passion: fear. Of all the thousand qualities a man may have, the
only one you will find as certainly in the youngest drummer boy
in my army as in me, is fear. It is fear that makes men fight: it
is indifference that makes them run away: fear is the mainspring
of war. Fear! I know fear well, better than you, better than any
woman. I once saw a regiment of good Swiss soldiers massacred by
a mob in Paris because I was afraid to interfere: I felt myself a
coward to the tips of my toes as I looked on at it. Seven months
ago I revenged my shame by pounding that mob to death with cannon
balls. Well, what of that? Has fear ever held a man back from
anything he really wanted--or a woman either? Never.
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