“...what if Napoleon, for example, had been in my position, and instead of having a Toulon, and an Egypt, and a crossing of Mont Blanc to begin his career with, what if instead of all those beautiful and monumental things he had quite simply had nothing but an absurd old woman, a petty bureaucrat's widow, whom he was also going to have to murder, so he could steal all the money out of her chest...Don't you think that's amusing?”