My reply shall be plain.  I enter the lists one of the last I have read all that my predecessors have published confident that all I state is true.  I have no interest in deceiving, no disgrace to fear, no reward to expect.  I ether wish to obscure nor embellish his glory.  However great Napoleon may have been, was he not also liable to pay his tribute to the weakness of human nature?  I speak of Napoleon such as I have seen him, known him, frequently admired and sometimes blamed him.  I state what I saw, heard, wrote, and thought at the time, under each circumstance that occurred.  I have not allowed myself to be carried away by the illusions of the imagination, nor to be influenced by friendship or hatred.  I shall not insert a single reflection which did not occur to me at the very moment of the event which gave it birth.  How many transactions and documents were there over which I could but lament!—­how many measures, contrary to my views, to my principles, and to my character!—­while the best intentions were incapable of overcoming difficulties which a most powerful and decided will rendered almost insurmountable.

I also wish the future historian to compare what I say with what others have related or may relate.  But it will be necessary for him to attend to dates, circumstances, difference of situation, change of temperament, and age,—­for age has much influence over men.  We do not think and act at fifty as at twenty-five.  By exercising this caution he will be able to discover the truth, and to establish an opinion for posterity.

The reader must not expect to find in these Memoirs an uninterrupted series of all the events which marked the great career of Napoleon; nor details of all those battles, with the recital of which so many eminent men have usefully and ably occupied themselves.  I shall say little about whatever I did not see or hear, and which is not supported by official documents.

Perhaps I shall succeed in confirming truths which have been doubted, and in correcting errors which have been adopted.  If I sometimes differ from the observations and statements of Napoleon at St. Helena, I am far from supposing that those who undertook to be the medium of communication between him and the public have misrepresented what he said.  I am well convinced that none of the writers of St. Helena can be taxed with the slightest deception; disinterested zeal and nobleness of character are undoubted pledges of their veracity.  It appears to me perfectly certain that Napoleon stated, dictated, or corrected all they have published.  Their honour is unquestionable; no one can doubt it.  That they wrote what he communicated must therefore be believed; but it cannot with equal confidence be credited that what he communicated was nothing but the truth.  He seems often to have related as a fact what was really only an idea,—­an idea, too, brought forth at St. Helena, the child of misfortune, and