Note 31 — TABLE TALK; OR, ORIGINAL ESSAYS ON MEN AND MANNERS (continued 3)

When Buonaparte left the Chamber of Deputies to go and fight his last fatal battle, he advised them not to be debating the forms of Constitutions when the enemy was at their gates. Benjamin Constant thought otherwise. He wanted to play a game at cat’s-cradle between the Republicans and Royalists, and lost his match. He did not care, so that he hampered a more efficient man than himself.