Rousseau had also written this in Émile:
Passerby, stop and reflect upon this hero.
Rousseau had seen this epitaph on an ancient tombstone. He believed that there were many heroes in his own age, whereas heroes had been exceedingly rare in ancient times.
Perhaps Rousseau had been wrong. It was not that there had been few heroes in ancient times, but that few had been passed down to the present and remembered. Most of them had merely been recorded in the annals of history.
In Georgiana's era, many people remembered Napoleon's victorious battles and regarded him as the God of War, or as a short, arrogant dictator.
Everyone knew that being loved was far more advantageous than being hated. Louis XVI had done his utmost to make himself a beloved ruler.
But now, even Georgiana found it hard to love Napoleoni. Yet that was his style of rule. When you thought you could go no further and wanted to give up, he forced you onward. You kept surpassing yourself until, in the end, you became someone entirely different from who you had been. A peasant's son became a marshal—it felt as unreal as a dream.
The little man was not popular, but his heart was good. He was always far better than those who appeared kind on the surface while harming others behind the scenes. But people were like that: they preferred those who brought them happiness over those who brought them pain. Of course, studying required diligence and hard work, but the children at wizarding schools preferred Quidditch. Make them write essays about Werewolves and every last one of them wailed in misery, yet when the time came to identify a real Werewolf, how much did they still remember?
The old fool's joyful education had effectively ruined an entire