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234
Recollections of
[Ch. XXI.

portant of all, in the estimation of a woman, is, whether he furnished another proof of the "close affinity between superlative intellect and the warmth of the generous affections," (to use the words of the Rev. ——— Crabbe, in his delightful Life of his Father,) or whether he must be considered only as a consummate calculating machine, the reasoning power perfect, but the heart altogether absent. Bourrienne, who, although conscientious and exact in the main, exhibits no partiality to the emperor, describes him as "trés peu aimant," and reports that he once said, "I have no friend except Duroc, who is unfeeling and cold, and suits me;" and this may have been true in his intercourse with the world, and with men whom he was accustomed to consider as mere machines, the instruments of his glory and ambition, and whom he therefore valued in proportion to the sternness of the stuff of which they were composed. Even his brothers, whom he is