It is the fact that Napoleon
Bonaparte, like Dante and Virgil, passed over the dark river Styx as
the honored leader of the rebellious forces of Hades. He did pass
away in the night, but he went as he went from Elba, and, as we shall
see, with more successful results.
For years the Government of Erebus had been unsatisfactory to many of
its subjects, mainly on account of the arbitrary methods of the
Weather Department.
"We are in a perpetual broil here," Caesar had said, "and I for one
am getting tired of it. The country demands a change. This
administration doesn't give us anything but dog-days."
For this the Roman warrior had been arrested and kept in an oven at
the rear of the Erebian Tuileries, as Apollyon's Palace was called,
for two centuries.
"The next rebel gets a gridiron, and the third will be served to
Cerberus en brochette," cried Apollyon.
Thus matters had gone on for five or six hundred years, and no one
had ventured to complain further, particularly in view of Caesar's
comments upon the horrid details of his incarceration published
several years after his release, under the title of "Two Centuries in
an Oven; or, Four Thousand and Six in the Shade.
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