The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte | Page 4

them. D.W.]

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PRIVATE LIFE OF NAPOLEON,
Complete
By CONSTANT
PREMIER VALET DE CHAMBRE
TRANSLATED BY WALTER CLARK
1895

PREFACE.
Though this work was first published in 1830, it has never before been
translated into English. Indeed, the volumes are almost out of print.
When in Paris a few years ago the writer secured, with much difficulty,
a copy, from which this translation has been made. Notes have been
added by the translator, and illustrations by the publishers, which, it is
believed, will enhance the interest of the original work by Constant.

"To paint Caesar in undress is not to paint Caesar," some one has said.
Yet men will always like to see the great 'en deshabille'. In these
volumes the hero is painted in undress. His foibles, his peculiarities, his
vices, are here depicted without reserve. But so also are his kindness of
heart, his vast intellect, his knowledge of men, his extraordinary energy,
his public spirit. The shutters are taken down, and the workings of the
mighty machinery are laid bare.
The late Prince Napoleon (who was more truly "the nephew of his
uncle" than was Napoleon III.), in his Napoleon and His Detractors,
bitterly assails this work of Constants attacking both its authenticity
and the correctness of its statements. But there appears no good reason
to doubt its genuineness, and the truthfulness of many of its details is
amply supported by other authorities. Notwithstanding its excesses and
follies, the great French Revolution will ever have an absorbing interest
for mankind, because it began as a struggle for the advancement of the
cause of manhood, liberty, and equal rights. It was a terribly earnest
movement; and, after the lapse of a century, interest continues unabated
in the great soldier who restored order, and organized and preserved the
new ideas by means of his Civil Code and a firm government.
Countless memoirs have been published by those who lived in those
heroic times. Yet everything which will cast new light upon the chief
actors in that great drama of humanity is still seized upon with avidity,
especially whatever concerns the Emperor.
This is not merely because he was a great conqueror; for such were,
after their fashion, Genghis Khan and Timour, and hundreds of others.
But it is because of the human interest which attaches to the wonderful
career of Napoleon and the events of which he was the central figure.
Never did poet or novelist imagine scenes so improbable. The son of an
obscure lawyer in an unimportant island becomes Emperor of the
French and King of Italy. His brothers and sisters become kings and
queens. The sons of innkeepers, notaries; lawyers, and peasants become
marshals of the empire. The Emperor, first making a West India Creole
his wife and Empress, puts her away, and marries a daughter of the
haughtiest and oldest royal house in Europe, the niece of a queen whom

the people of France had beheaded a few years before. Their son is
born a king--King of Rome. Then suddenly the pageantry dissolves,
and Emperor, kings, and queens become subjects again. Has
imagination ever dreamed anything wilder than this? The dramatic
interest of this story will always attract, but there is a deeper one. The
secret spring of all those rapid changes, and the real cause of the great
interest humanity will always feel in the story of those eventful times,
is to be found in Napoleon's own explanation--"A career open to talents,
without distinction of birth." Till that day the accident of birth was the
key to every honor and every position. No man could hold even a
lieutenancy in the army who could not show four quarterings on his
coat of arms.
It was as the "armed apostle of democracy" that Napoleon went forth
conquering and to conquer. He declared at St. Helena that he "had
always marched supported by the opinions of six millions of men."
The old woman who met him incognito climbing the hill of Tarare, and
replying to his assertion that "Napoleon was only a tyrant like the rest,"
exclaimed, "It may be so, but the others are the kings of the nobility,
while he is one of us, and we have chosen him ourselves," expressed a
great truth. As long as Napoleon represented popular sovereignty he
was invincible; but when, deeming himself strong enough to stand
alone, he endeavored to conciliate the old order of things, and,
divorcing the daughter of the people, took for a bride the daughter of
kings and allied himself with them--at that moment, like another
Samson, "his strength departed from him." Disasters came as they had
come to him before, but this time the heart of the people was no longer
with him. He fell.
This man has been studied as