Laffitte, November, 1857.

“I have once more taken up, after a long lapse of time, the manuscript of these Memoirs, which my mother composed nearly forty years ago; and, having attentively reperused it, I now leave it to my sons and to their children, with an injunction to publish it. I believe that it will prove a useful historical testimony, and, combined with her correspondence, will be a most interesting monument to the intellect and the heart of a gifted and good woman. This work will perpetuate the memory of my mother.

“At whatever epoch these Memoirs may appear, I foresee that they will not find the public ready to receive them entirely without protest, and with satisfaction complete at all points. Even should the Imperial restoration which we now witness not be destined to a prolonged future—should it not be, as I hope it may not be, the final government of the France of the Revolution—I suspect that, whether through pride, weakness, or imagination, France, as a whole, will continue to entertain a tolerably exalted opinion of Napoleon, which it will be reluctant to submit to the free examination of politics and philosophy. He was one of those great men who are placed from the beginning in the sphere of fancy rather than in that of reason, and in his case poetry has taken the lead of history. A somewhat puerile sympathy, a somewhat weak generosity, has almost always made the nation refuse to impute to Bonaparte those awful ills which he brought down upon France. The nation has pitied him the most for its own misfortunes, and thought of him as the noblest victim of the calamities of which he was the author. I know that the sentiments which have led France to make this strange mistake are excusable and even praiseworthy; but I also know that national vanity, the lack of seriousness of mind, levity which takes little heed of reason and justice, are the sources of this patriotic error. Let us lay aside the question of principle—since the nation chooses to resolve that question differently at different times, and glories in despising liberty at intervals—and let us speak only the language of national independence. How can he be in the eyes of the people the hero of that independence who twice brought the foreign conqueror into the capital of France, and whose government is the only one which, for five hundred years, since the time of the mad King Charles VI., left French territory smaller than it found it? Even Louis XV. and Charles X. did better than that. Nevertheless, I am convinced the multitude will abide in its error, and non auferetur ab ea.

“It is, then, very unlikely that the spirit in which my mother has written will ever be popular, or that all her readers will be convinced. I am prepared for this, but I also think that among thoughtful people the truth will make its way. Infatuation will not have an endless duration, and, notwithstanding certain obstinate prejudices, public opinion—especially if liberty be at length restored to us and remain with us—will be enlightened, and will never again sacrifice the rights of reason and those of the public conscience to glory. Will my mother appear sufficiently impartial to these more impartial judges? I believe she will, if they take account of the time at which she wrote, and also of the sentiments and ideas which inspired her; and so I have no hesitation in delivering up her Memoirs to the judgment of the world.

“‘The further I go,’ wrote my mother to me, ‘the more I am resolved that, until my death, you shall be my only reader, and that is enough for me.’ And again: ‘Your father says he knows no one to whom I could show what I am writing. He says nobody carries so far as I do “the talent of being true.” That is his expression. Well, then, I do write for no one, but one day you will find this among my effects, and you may do with it what you will.’ She was not without some apprehensions. ‘There is a thought which sometimes troubles me. I say to myself, “If one day my son should publish all this, what will be thought of me!” The idea that I may be supposed to be evil-minded, or, at least, ill-natured, makes me uneasy. I exhaust myself with the effort to find something to praise, but this man was such an exterminator (assommateur) of worth, and we were brought so low, that I grow utterly disheartened, and the cry of truth utters itself irresistibly. I know no one but you to whom I would intrust such confidences.’

“I hold myself formally authorized by these passages to bequeath the work which my mother confided to me to the public. As for the opinions which it expresses, taking them upon myself, I will explain myself freely respecting the Emperor and the Empire, but not from the purely political point of view. All that I might say on the subject of despotism (which I hate) would be without importance in this case, since the question is, What would be a just judgment of the Emperor and the Empire formed by one who had witnessed the 18th Brumaire, and shared the confident readiness of the nation to divest itself of the charge of its own destinies, by placing them in the hands of one man? I deal with the moral, and not the political, aspect of the matter.

“Let us first consider the Emperor, and discuss him with those only who, while finding much to admire in him, are willing to exercise their judgment upon what they admire. It was commonly said, under his reign, that he despised men. The motives by which he defended his policy in his conversations were not taken from among the noble qualities of the human heart, but from that which he thoroughly understood, the imagination of the people. Now, imagination is naturally captivated by grand and beautiful things, and the imagination of the Emperor, which was vivid and daring, was accessible to this kind of charm. His extraordinary faculties rendered him capable of great things, and he employed them, with others, to captivate France, the world, and posterity. Thence came what was thoroughly admirable in his power and his life; and, if we were to consider that only, we could not place him too high. Nevertheless, a close observer will discern that it was by that intelligence and imagination, rather than the purely moral sentiments of justice and of right, that all was done. Take, for example, religion. It was not the truth of religion, it was its influence and its prestige, which dictated what he did for its cause; and so with all the rest. In his contemptuous estimate of humanity, he recognized only two springs of action—vanity and self-interest; and to the masterly handling of these he applied himself with remarkable ability. While by the Éclat of his acts, by the glory of his arms, by a permanent embellishment of conservative social principles, he gave to his government what was essential to prevent self-love from blushing at the fact of its connection with it, he carefully manipulated, he caressed, he even exalted other sentiments more humble, which may oftentimes be harmless, but which are not noble and virtuous principles. Love of repose, fear of responsibility, preoccupation with the pleasures of private life, the desire of personal comfort, the taste of riches, as well in the individual as in the family; finally, all the weaknesses which usually accompany these sentiments when they are exclusive, found in him a protector. It is from this point of view that he was everywhere recognized as essential to the preservation of order. But, when men are governed by the springs I am about to call to mind, and when the governor is not upheld or restrained by the sentiment of pure and true glory, by the instinct of a soul naturally frank and generous, it is an easy step to the thought that imagination, vanity, interest are paid with counterfeit as well as good money; that abuses of power, appearances of grandeur, success attained at all cost, tranquillity maintained by oppression, riches distributed by favor, prosperity realized by force or made to seem to exist by falsehood—that, finally, all the triumphs of artifice or of violence, all that despotism can wrest from credulity and fear, are things which also prosper among men; and that the world is often, without serious objection, the plaything of the strongest and most shrewd. But nothing in the nature of the Emperor preserved him from the temptation of employing such means for the advancement of his power. Not satisfied with meriting power, he consented, when he could not merit it, to take it by force or to steal it. He made no distinction between prudence and cunning, or between true statesmanship and Machiavellism. Finally, policy is always in the path of deception, and Napoleon was always a deceiver.

“It is deception which, in my judgment, most degraded the Emperor, and, unhappily, with him his empire. For this reason, it is to be regretted that France yielded obedience to him, that men rendered him service, whatever glory the nation has gained, whatever probity and whatever talent the men have shown. One can not wholly ignore the misfortune of having been the dupe or the accomplice, in all cases the instrument, of a system in which a cunning deception plays as great a part as wisdom, and violence as genius; of a system in which cunning deception and violence must lead on to the desperate extremes of an unwise policy. To such a policy France will not consent, and it is only in the interest of self-love that France exalts the glory of Napoleon.

“As to his associates, they likewise ought certainly not to have been humiliated by what they did or what they silently sustained. They were right in not publicly denouncing what the nation did not denounce, and in presenting services loyally rendered, honesty, zeal, devotion, capacity, the patriotism which they had displayed in the performance of public duties, as an offset to the bitter denunciations of their adversaries, to the trifling or corrupt parties, who had done less or who had done worse. The recollections of the Convention or those of the emigration could not be brought against them to any advantage, and, after all, they did well not to blush at their cause. Their justification is found in the language of Tacitus, who, even under a despotism, thinks that praise is due a capable and efficient officer, though he may practice what he calls obsequium et modestia.

“These last words are applicable to persons of high character who, like the members of my family, served the Emperor without mean selfishness and without special distinction. But still, when, under his reign itself, eyes were opened to the character of his despotism—when the wail of the dying nation had been heard, when later, in reflecting upon the fall of a dictatorial power and on the succession of a constitutional power, that policy was brought up for consideration which does not place government and liberty in the hands of enemies, it was impossible not to revert with some embarrassment, with some bitterness of heart, to those days in which example, confidence, admiration, thoughtlessness, a justifiable ambition, had united to urge good citizens to place themselves among the supporters of absolute power. For he who does not seek to make himself blind, he who is ready to be honest with himself, will find it impossible to conceal the fact that dignity of mind and character is lost under the pressure of a despotism even glorious and necessary, and more completely under one that is harsh and maintained without reason. There is no cause of self-reproach without doubt; but neither can one praise his own acts, or be satisfied with what he has done or what he has seen; and the more the soul is opened to the convictions of liberty, the more one turns his eyes with grief to the days in which liberty was shut out from it—days of voluntary servitude, as BoËtius characterizes it.

“What it has not been either necessary or proper to say of one’s self to his contemporaries and of the latter to themselves, it is a duty to frankly avow when one writes for himself and for the future. What conscience has felt and revealed, what experience and reflection have taught, it is necessary to delineate, or not write at all. Unbiased truth, disinterested truth, is the controlling thought of the Memoirs. This is the basis of those of my mother.

“She had suffered intensely during the years in which her opinions were in opposition to her interests, and during which the former could have triumphed over the latter only per abrupta, as Tacitus says, speaking of this same thing, sed in nullum reipublicÆ usum. Attempts of this kind, besides, never fall to the lot of a woman; and, in a remarkable letter that my mother wrote to one of her friends, she said to her that women at least had always the expedient of saying in the palace of CÆsar:

And she declared to her that this line had been her secret consolation.

“Her correspondence will reveal in its lightest shades, in its deepest recesses, the sentiments of a pure and active soul. It will there be seen how she united a generous kindness to a penetrating observation of all those weaknesses, of all those unhappy circumstances of our nature, which give opportunity to the painters of morals to display their talents. It will there also be seen how, after having caused her much suffering, Napoleon had kept a place in her thoughts; how this memory still moved her; and how, when the unhappiness of his exile at St. Helena was described, she was deeply affected. When, in the summer of 1821, the news of the death of Napoleon was brought to Paris, I saw her melt with tears, and she always became sad when uttering his name. As to the men of her time, I will say only one thing: she had learned to know them at Court. The recollection she had preserved of it left her no pleasure. I have somewhere seen related a little circumstance that greatly interested those who witnessed it. It was the time when the French imitation of Schiller’s ‘Marie Stuart’ was in fashion. There was a scene in which Leicester repels, by pretending not to know him, a devoted young man who, relying on his secret thoughts, comes to him with a proposal to save the Queen of Scotland. Talma represented admirably the haughty cowardice of the courtier, who disavows his own affection for fear of being compromised, and insolently repels the man who makes him afraid: ‘What do you want of me? I do not know you.’ The act terminated, and in the box in which we were seated the entire company was struck with this scene, and my mother in her agitation suffered some words to escape whose import was: ‘That was it precisely! I have seen the same thing!’ When suddenly appeared at the entrance of the box M. de B——, to whom no special application could assuredly have been made, but who had been chamberlain of the Emperor, my mother could no longer restrain herself. She said to Mme. de Catellan, ‘If you knew, madame!’ ... and she wept!

“It may be said that this condition of her mind has influenced her in coloring her pictures. I do not think it so. Saint-Simon has also painted a Court, and the despotism in it was more becoming, more natural, and the characters, perhaps, a little more strong in our days. What does he do, however, if not justify, in his truthful painting, what the teachers of his time and the moralists of all times have said of Courts in general? The exaggeration of Saint-Simon is in the language. Of a fault he makes a vice; of a weakness, a cowardice; of a negligence, a treason; and of a hesitation, a crime. The expression is never strong enough for his thought, and it is his style which is unjust rather than his judgment.

“Let us mention a person of a less impulsive mind, more reserved in her language, and who certainly had her reasons for seeing with more indulgence than Saint-Simon the people over whom Louis XIV. reigned. How did Mme. de Maintenon speak of the Court? ‘As to your friends of the Court,’ she wrote to Mlle. de Glapion, ‘they are always with you, and, if you could see what we see, you would find yourself seeing (at Saint-Cyr) only irregularities, wayward conduct, want of light; while we see murders, jealousies, hatreds, treacheries, insatiable desires, degradations, which are covered up by the name of grandeur, of courage, etc., for I fly into a passion in merely permitting myself to think of them.’ The judgments of my mother are not characterized by such vivid expressions. But, like Saint-Simon, like Mme. de Maintenon, she had good reason to think that a constant personality, which betrays itself by fear, jealousy, complaisance, flattery, forgetfulness of others, contempt of justice, and desire to injure others, reigns at the Court of absolute kings, and that self-love and interest are the two keys of every Court secret. My mother has said no more; and her diction, without being cold and tame, never exaggerates the facts with which she deals, and allows, in almost everything she has been compelled to relate, that excuse demanded by human weakness in its struggle with bad example, with the temptation of fortune, and with the seductions of a power that does not find itself compelled to respect its promises. It is not without reason that, when we speak of the Empire, our eulogies are almost exclusively addressed to its armies, because, at least, in the business of war, intrepid contempt of death and of suffering is such a triumphant victory over the selfishness of ordinary life, that it covers up whatever this selfishness can suggest, even to the soldiers themselves, of bitter sacrifices to pride, to envy, to cupidity, to ambition.

“Look through the centuries in which historians and moralists endeavor to paint in its true colors every evil that incessantly increases within the sphere of government, especially in the shadow, or, if Louis XIV. demands it, in the sun of absolute power. It is strange, in fact, how that which ought to bring into play only devotion, and to place the benefit of all above personal interest—I mean the service of the state—furnishes to human selfishness occasions to make mistakes and means of being satisfied by the art of concealing itself. But it is apparent that this has not been said often enough, for I have not discovered that the evil is soon to end, or even become less conspicuous. Truth alone, incessantly presented to public opinion, can arm it against falsehoods, of which party spirit and state government raise a cloud concealing the misfortunes of the body politic. The masses of the people can never know too well at what price human insolence sells them the necessary service of a government. In times of revolution especially, misfortune sometimes renders it indulgent to the forms of government which have fallen, and the system which triumphs covers with a deceptive veil everything which makes its victory odious. Truthful books must, some time or other, cause all masks to fall, and leave to all our weaknesses the salutary fear of being some day revealed.”