“Bonaparte had a violent fit of rage. He galloped straight off toward Auteuil. He was no doubt preparing himself for a bitter exchange with Talleyrand, and words would probably have turned to action if he hadn’t remembered that Talleyrand was intimately connected with Paris high society, which would have laughed at him if he had taken the story too seriously. Having reached Auteuil, he therefore decided to laugh it off and show he was amused by the joke, though he could barely conceal his anger. Incredible though it might seem, Talleyrand, who was in an excellent mood, immediately thought up the idea of making fun of him once again. ‘Never mind, mon général, it’s true the wild boar hunt was a disappointment. But it is still early. You needn’t go back to Paris yet. There are plenty of rabbits in the Bois de Boulogne: Louis XVI often hunted them. Door locks and rabbits were that poor man’s favorite pastimes! You well know he was an excellent shot.’ ‘Yes, but I’m a very poor shot,’ said Bonaparte, whose good humor had not yet revived. ‘Your ride must have given you an appetite,’ continued Talleyrand. ‘While you sit down and have something to eat, I’ll have my guns fetched from Paris. They belonged to Louis XVI.’

“They remained at table for two hours, during which Talleyrand plied the future emperor with those elegant words of flattery that he was so skilled at dishing out. Servants were meanwhile sent to Paris with instructions to buy all the rabbits they could find. They gathered up at least five or six hundred and transported them to the Bois de Boulogne in various hired carriages. Bonaparte set off, armed with his gun, and accompanied once again by his aide-de-camp. ‘I’m no Louis the Sixteenth,’ he said. ‘I’m certainly not going to kill a single rabbit.’ Nonetheless he soon killed a fair number. The aide-de-camp, on seeing how seriously Napoleon was slaughtering the poor animals and continually talking about Louis XVI, could no longer restrain himself and burst out laughing. The fiftieth rabbit had at last been killed and Bonaparte seemed pleased with his success. The aide-de-camp could no longer hold back and, approaching his master, he whispered in his ear: ‘In truth, mon général, I’m beginning to think they’re not wild rabbits. I have a nasty feeling that scoundrel of a priest has tricked us again.’

“Bonaparte, gripped by a violent fury, galloped back to Paris.¹⁰⁶ Six months passed before he made his peace with Talleyrand, and he probably threatened to take his revenge if Talleyrand had ever dared to mention the rabbit shoot or the wild boar hunt in the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Indeed, it is certain that these two stories never circulated in Paris.” Even while he gazed at Moscow in flames, Napoleon knew that one eye saw him as a ferocious rabbit hunter.

Léon Bloy explained the link between Napoleon and Hitler in the plainest terms at a time when Hitler had not yet invented Nazism (it was 1912): “For anyone who sees into the Absolute, war has no sense unless it exterminates, and the very near future will prove it.¹⁰⁷ It is a folly or a hypocrisy to take prisoners. Napoleon was certainly neither a fool nor a hypocrite, but this supposed butcher was sentimental, always ready to forgive, magnanimous, and despite everything he believed in the magnanimity of others, and we know what price he paid for this incomprehensible illusion … He was not therefore the monster who would be needed for total, apocalyptic war, with all its consequences—the abyss of war invoked by the abyss of turpitude. And it seems obvious that he will not be the forerunner of this demon.”