apparently considered by them the more wicked as possessed by a parvenu emperor, and far removed, in a moral point of view, from the statecraft so allowable in an ancient monarchy.  But for Napoleon himself and his family and Court there was literally no limit to the really marvellous inventions of his enemies.  He might enter every capital on the Continent, but there was some consolation in believing that he himself was a monster of wickedness, and his Court but the scene of one long protracted orgie.

There was enough against the Emperor in the Memoirs to make them comfortable reading for his opponents, though very many of the old calumnies were disposed of in them.  They contained indeed the nearest approximation to the truth which had yet appeared.  Metternich, who must have been a good judge, as no man was better acquainted with what he himself calls the “age of Napoleon,” says of the Memoirs:  “If you want something to read, both interesting and amusing, get the Memoires de Bourrienne.  These are the only authentic Memoirs of Napoleon which have yet appeared.  The style is not brilliant, but that only makes them the mere trustworthy.”  Indeed, Metternich himself in his own Memoirs often follows a good deal in the line of Bourrienne:  among many formal attacks, every now and then he lapses into half involuntary and indirect praise of his great antagonist, especially where he compares the men he had to deal with in aftertimes with his former rapid and talented interlocutor.  To some even among the Bonapartists, Bourrienne was not altogether distasteful.  Lucien Bonaparte, remarking that the time in which Bourrienne treated with Napoleon as equal with equal did not last long enough for the secretary, says he has taken a little revenge in his Memoirs, just as a lover, after a break with his mistress, reveals all her defects.  But Lucien considers that Bourrienne gives us a good enough idea of the young officer of the artillery, of the great General, and of the First Consul.  Of the Emperor, says Lucien, he was too much in retirement to be able to judge equally well.  But Lucien was not a fair representative of the Bonapartists; indeed he had never really thought well of his brother or of his actions since Lucien, the former “Brutus” Bonaparte, had ceased to be the adviser of the Consul.  It was well for Lucien himself to amass a fortune from the presents of a corrupt court, and to be made a Prince and Duke by the Pope, but he was too sincere a republican not to disapprove of the imperial system.  The real Bonapartists were naturally and inevitably furious with the Memoirs.  They were not true, they were not the work of Bourrienne, Bourrienne himself was a traitor, a purloiner of manuscripts, his memory was as bad as his principles, he was not even entitled to the de before his name.  If the Memoirs were at all to be pardoned, it was because his share was only really a few notes wrung from him by large pecuniary offers at a time when he was pursued by his creditors, and when his brain was already affected.