Ten Years Exile | Page 6

society I was fond of,
but all of whom were attached to the new government. At five o'clock I
had received ten notes of apology; the first and second I bore tolerably
well, but as they succeeded each other rapidly, I began to be alarmed.
In vain did I appeal to my conscience, which advised me to renounce
all the pleasures attached to the favour of Bonaparte: I was blamed by
so many honorable people, that I knew not how to support myself on
my own way of thinking. Bonaparte had as yet done nothing exactly
culpable; many asserted that he preserved France from anarchy: in

short, if at that moment he had signified to me any wish of
reconciliation, I should have been delighted: but a step of that sort he
will never take without exacting a degradation, and, to induce that
degradation, he generally enters into such passions of authority, as
terrify into yielding every thing. I do not wish by that to say that
Bonaparte is not really passionate: what is not calculation in him is
hatred, and hatred generally expresses itself in rage: but calculation is
in him so much the strongest, that he never goes beyond what it is
convenient for him to show, according to circumstances and persons.
One day a friend of mine saw him storming at a commissary of war,
who had not done his duty; scarcely had the poor man retired,
trembling with apprehension, when Bonaparte turned round to one of
his aides-du-camp, and said to him, laughing, I hope I have given him a
fine fright; and yet the moment before, you would have believed that he
was no longer master of himself.
When it suited the first consul to exhibit his ill-humour against me, he
publicly reproached his brother Joseph for continuing to visit me.
Joseph felt it necessary in consequence to absent himself from my
house for several weeks, and his example was followed by three fourths
of my acquaintance. Those who had been proscribed on the 18th
Fructidor, pretended that at that period, I had been guilty of
recommending M. de Talleyrand to Barras, for the ministry of foreign
affairs: and yet, these people were then continually about that same
Talleyrand, whom they accused me of having served. All those who
behaved ill to me, were cautious in concealing that they did so for fear
of incurring the displeasure of the first consul. Every day, however,
they invented some new pretext to injure me, thus exerting all the
energy of their political opinions against a defenceless and persecuted
woman, and prostrating themselves at the feet of the vilest Jacobins, the
moment the first consul had regenerated them by the baptism of his
favor.
Fouche, the minister of police, sent for me to say, that the first consul
suspected me of having excited my friend who had spoken in the
tribunate. I replied to him, which was certainly the truth, that M.
Constant was a man of too superior an understanding to make his

opinions matter of reproach to a woman, and that besides, the speech in
question contained absolutely nothing but reflections on the
independence which every deliberative assembly ought to possess, and
that there was not a word in it which could be construed into a personal
reflection on the first consul. The minister admitted as much. I ventured
to add some words on the respect due to the liberty of opinions in a
legislative body; but I could easily perceive that he took no interest in
these general considerations; he already knew perfectly well, that under
the authority of the man whom he wished to serve, principles were out
of the question, and he shaped his conduct accordingly. But as he is a
man of transcendant understanding in matters of revolution, he had
already laid it down as a system to do the least evil possible, the
necessity of the object admitted. His preceding conduct certainly
exhibited little feeling of morality, and he was frequently in the habit of
talking of virtue as an old woman's story. A remarkable sagacity,
however, always led him to choose the good as a reasonable thing, and
his intelligence made him occasionally do what conscience would have
dictated to others. He advised me to go into the country, and assured
me, that in a few days, all would be quieted. But at my return, I was
very far from finding it so.


CHAPTER 3
System of Fusion adopted by Bonaparte--Publication of my work on
Literature.
While we have seen the Christian kings take two confessors to examine
their consciences more narrowly, Bonaparte chose two ministers one of
the old and the other of the new regime, whose business it was to place
at his disposal the Machiavelian means of