MESDAMES DE STAEL AND DE REMUSAT

It is a strange human frailty that cannot stand for long the purgatory of seeing the elevation of a great public benefactor.  The less competent the critics, the more merciless they are in their declamation and intrigue.  They hint at faults, and if this is too ineffective, they invent them.  Men in prominent public positions rarely escape the vituperation of the professional scandalmonger.  These creatures exist everywhere.  Their vanity is only equal to their incompetency in all matters that count.  Their capacity consists in knowing the kind of diversion a certain class of people relish, and the more exalted their prey is, and the larger the reputation he may have for living a blameless life, the more persistent their whisperings, significant nods, and winkings become.  They know, and they could tell, a thing or two which would paralyse belief.  They could show how correct they have been in consistently proclaiming that so and so was a very much overestimated man, and never ought to have been put into such a high position; “and besides, I don’t want to say all I know, but his depravity!  Well, there, I could, if I would, open some people’s eyes, but I don’t want to do anybody any harm,” and so on.  These condescending ulcerous-minded defamers congratulate themselves on their goodness of heart in withholding from the public gaze their nasty imaginary accusations, which are merely the thoughts of a conceited and putrid mind.

Many and many a poor man, without knowing it, is the innocent victim of unfounded accusations, hatched and circulated in that subtle, insinuating way so familiar to the sexless calumniator.  The genuine female traducer is an awful scourge, especially if she be political.  No male can equal her in refined aggressive cunning.  She can circulate a filthy libel by writing a virtuous letter, and never a flaw will appear to trip her into responsibility for it.  And her sardonic smile is an inarticulate revelation of all she wishes to convey.  It is more than a mere oration.  It emits the impression of a bite.

Madame de Stael showed an aptitude for this ignoble aggressiveness towards Napoleon after she had exhausted every form of strategy to allure him into a flirtation with her.  She was frequently a sort of magnificent horse-marine who bounced herself into the presence of prominent individuals, thrusting her venomed points on those who had been flattered into listening; at other times she was feline in her methods.  Talleyrand and Fouche made use of this latter phase of her character to serve their own ends.  She had a talent which was used for mischief, but her vulgarity and egotism were quite deplorable.  She would have risked the torments of Hades if she could but have embarked upon a liaison with Napoleon.  She plied him with letters well seasoned with passion, but all to no purpose.  She came to see him at the Rue Chantereine, and was sent away.  She invited him to balls to which he never went.  But she had opportunities given her which were used in forcing herself upon his attention.  At one of these she held him for two hours, and imagining she had made a great impression, she asked him abruptly, “Who was the most superior woman in antiquity, and who is so at the present day?” Napoleon had had enough of her love-making chatter, so snapped out in his quick practical way, “She who has borne the most children.”  The lady’s discomfiture may be imagined.  It was a deadly thrust.

This very same lady, who had tempted the ruler of France without success, made violent love to Benjamin Constant, who was no friend of Napoleon’s at the time.  Her letters to him were passionate, and Napoleon told Gourgaud at St. Helena that she even threatened to kill her son if Benjamin would do what she wished him to.  This fussy female intriguer suggested to Napoleon that if he would give her two million francs she would write anything he wished.  She was immediately packed about her business.

Madame de Stael was not an important personage at all, but she had the power of attracting people to her who, like herself, had grievances to be discussed, and we may without doubt conclude that these gatherings were composed of well-selected intriguers whom she had fixed in her feline eye.  Her great grievance was the First Consul’s, and subsequently the Emperor’s, coldness towards her.  He estimated her at her true value.  He treated her with the courtesy due to a French citizen, but nothing more, and when she misbehaved in his presence, he rebuked her with due consideration for her sex.  When she caused people to talk to him of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders as was his habit, and smiled disdainfully; though occasionally he could not resist the temptation of ridiculing her comic pretensions.  But this human curiosity had power for mischief.

She was not only an intriguer, but, subsequent to her failure in love-making, she developed a literary tyrannicide.  She condescended to patronise the head of the State by causing it to be conveyed to him that her hostility would cease under certain well-defined conditions.  When he became the real Governor of France, Napoleon put a stop to religious persecution, and put the churches into use.  He re-established religion, and by doing so brought under his influence one hundred million Catholics.  This wise policy created strong opposition from a section of the clergy.  Madame de Stael and the friends whom she had whipped up, many of them being the principal generals, were mischievously opposed to it, and brought pressure to bear so that he might be induced to establish the Protestant religion.  Napoleon ignored them all.  He knew he was on the right ground, and that the nation as a whole was with him.  France was essentially a Roman Catholic country, and the head of it gave back to her people what was regarded as the true faith.  The exile frequently referred to these matters in conversation with one or other of his followers.  Napoleon’s disdain for Madame de Stael was well merited, and he never saw or heard of her that it did not set his nerves on edge.  She was the “death on man” sort of female who persisted in being, either directly or indirectly, his political adviser.  Dr. Max Lenz accuses the Emperor of developing a despotism that caused him to drive a woman like Madame de Stael from land to land, “and trampled under foot every manifestation of independence.”

Really, the good doctor lays himself open to the charge of not making himself better informed of the doings of this sinister person, who was steeped in treason, and who refused to accept the laws of life with proper submission.  It is merely farcical to assume that Madame de Stael was kept well under discipline because of a whimsical despotism on the part of the man who had fixed a settled government on France, and who was kept well informed of the attempts of the Baroness and her anarchist associates to undermine and destroy the Constitution it had cost France and its ruler so much to reconstruct and consolidate.  “Let her be judged as a man,” said Napoleon, and in truth he was right in deciding in this way, as her whole attitude aped the masculine.  He was right, too, in showing how wholly objectionable she had made herself to him.  He had been led to adopt a sort of “For God’s sake, what does she want?” idea of her during the early years of his rule, though he never at any time showed weakness in his actual dealings with her.  He disliked women who asserted themselves as men, and he disliked the amorous offspring of Necker more because he loathed women who threw themselves into the arms of men; she had surfeited him with her persistent attempts at making love to him.  In one of her letters to him she says it was evidently an egregious error, an entire misunderstanding of human nature, that the quiet and timid Josephine had bound up her fate with that of a tempestuous temper like his.  She and Napoleon seemed born for each other, and it appeared as if nature had only gifted her with so enthusiastic a disposition in order to enable her to admire such a hero as he was.  Napoleon in his fury tore this precious letter up and exclaimed, “This manufacturer of sentiments dares to compare herself with Josephine!”

The letters were not answered, though this had no deterrent effect on Madame de Stael.  She continued to pour out in profusion adoration.  He was “a god who had descended on earth.”  She addressed him as such, and his callous reception of her madness drove her into despair and vindictiveness which brought salutary punishment to herself.  Her weapons of wit and sarcasm availed nothing.  He looked upon her as a sort of gifted lunatic that had got the idea of seducing him into her head.  She became so mischievous that he bundled her out of France.  “As long as I live,” said he, “she shall not return.”  He advised that she should live in Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London, the latter for preference.  There she would have full scope for her genius in producing pamphlets.  “Oh yes,” says the “god who had descended on earth”; “she has talent, much talent, in fact far too much, but it is offensive and revolutionary.”  This poetess-politician, who said brave things and wrote amazing diatribes against her “god,” was in truth one of the most servile creatures on earth.  She pleaded to be allowed to come back to her native land, and pledged herself to a life of retirement, but the great man’s faith in his own sound judgment was not to be shaken.

“Her promises are all very fine,” he said, “but I know what they mean.  Why should she be so anxious to be in the immediate reach of tyranny?”

Like all eccentric women who desire to play the part of man, she made her appearance before Napoleon in the most absurd, tasteless attire.  This woman of genius and folly lacked the wisdom of gauging the taste of Bonaparte, whom she desired to captivate with her sluttish appearance and whirling words.

This man of method and order, who had a keen eye for grace or beauty in its varied phases, was always pronounced in his opinion that women should dress simply but with faultless taste.  It improves good looks, and, if need be, it covers up defects; but in any case it is the bounden duty of women to dress with some regard to conventional custom.  It gives them much greater influence than they would otherwise have.  Most women know the importance of this trick, and do it, and they are amply rewarded for their good sense.

Madame de Stael did quite the opposite.  She appeared before the Man of Destiny in a shocking garb, and he regarded it as a piece of impertinence.  It stirred up his prejudice openly against her, in spite of his indifferent attempts to conceal it, but her egotism was so gigantic, she actually believed she was making great strides towards curing his callousness towards her.  This woman has been used elaborately by anti-Napoleonic writers to prove that he was an inhuman despot and she a high-minded, virtuous Frenchwoman, and a genius in the art of government.  They quote her as a great authority.  Her knowledge of his evil deeds and mistakes of administration is set forth as being flawless.  They bemoan his treatment of this amiable female, and in the midst of their ecstasy of compassion and wrath they hand down to posterity a record of unheard-of woes.  There is little doubt Napoleon’s remark that “the Neckers were an odd lot, always comforting themselves in mutual admiration,” is well merited.  The daughter utilised the name of the father with lavish persistence.  Her ambition and impudence were boundless, and were the cause of Napoleon bestowing some wholesome discipline upon her, which, like a true heroine, she resented, and sent forth from her exile streams of relentless wailing, adorned by a fluency of venom that would have put the most militant suffragette in our time to the blush.

But suddenly her hysteria subsided, and after a brief repose she switched off the truculent side and sought the pity of the man whose life she had set herself to make one long ache if he did not yield to her arrogant pretensions.  She had written in a perpetual scream of his iniquities, and was thrown over by her former associates, who saw clearly enough that no real good could be accomplished by whining about cruelty when stern flawless justice only existed.  They recognised that she was a personality, but her antics puzzled them, and well they might.  She bewailed her isolation with a throbbing heart, and after committing indiscretions that Robespierre would have sent her head flying for, she was suddenly bereaved of her neglected husband.  This event gave Benjamin Constant a better chance, but the Baroness aimed at higher game.  She was held in the grip of a delusion that she had it in her power to hypnotise the First Consul and cause him to become her lover.  She had an uncontrollable idolatry for this august person, whom she hoped to win over by writing for the consumption of his enemies the many reasons for her aversion to him.  Without a doubt the woman was madly in love with the object of her supposed aversion, and was driven to frenzy by his obvious distaste for her.

In 1811 she secretly married a young officer called M. de Rocca, who had fallen desperately in love with her.  He was amiable and brilliant; became an officer of Hussars in the French Army; did valiant deeds amongst the hills in Andalusia in 1809; and was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour.  Subsequently he was shot down by guérillas, badly wounded in the thigh, foot, and chest; had a romantic deliverance; was hidden in a chapel by a young lady, and nursed into consciousness and convalescence by loving care, which enabled him to reach Madrid, and ultimately Geneva, where, in the radiance of youthful infatuation, he rode with reckless energy down a risky steep part of the city, so that he might pass the window of the lady, who was more than old enough to be his mother, and in a few months was to be made his wife.  A child was born to them in 1812, and in order to save its legitimacy, she acknowledged the marriage to a few, but it was not generally known until after her death that Rocca was her lawful husband.  Conscious, and sensitive no doubt, that it was not quite natural for old women to marry young men, she prudently had the event kept secret.  The young husband did not only possess tender affection for her, but he combined chivalrous ambitions which made the romance additionally attractive.

Be it remembered that Benjamin Constant was a former lover of Madame de Stael.  The young bridegroom, following a natural instinct, had a great dislike to Benjamin, and took an opportunity of really small provocation to challenge him to a duel, which, owing to wiser counsels, was never fought.  There does not seem to have been very much to fight a duel about.  Constant had a quarrel with his father in which he involved Madame de Stael, and Rocca resented it like a gallant youthful husband, who was at that stage when it is thought desirable to shoot or otherwise kill somebody, in order to show the extent of his devotion to his enchantress.  Rocca had hoped to die (so he said) before her, but fate willed that he should linger on and suffer for six months more.  Madame de Stael slept peacefully into her last long sleep on July 14, 1817.

Her career was chequered and restless.  She had influence, which she used oft-times recklessly, and led less gifted people than herself into committing needless errors.  She wrote and spoke with a wit and sarcasm which charmed all but those at whom it was directed.  Her bitter rebuffs and severe trials were mainly of her own making.  For the most part she wrote with superficial feeling and without real soul.  During the Napoleonic regime, time was a creeping horror to her, but she found pleasure in the thought that it was a torture to her suffering heart.  George Eliot knew and used her extraordinary power; Madame de Stael wasted hers.  Nevertheless she had many friends who loved her society.  Wellington was brought under her influence.  Byron, who shrank from her at first, says, “She was the best creature in the world.”  She had been at some pains to try to bring Lord and Lady Byron together.  She was capable of impressing people with her charm, but magnetic influence she had none when living, and has left none behind.

Rocca exclaimed, when he heard that she had passed to the shadows, “What crown could replace that which I have lost!” And the distracted Benjamin Constant, filled with remorse, reproached himself for some undefined suffering he had caused her, and did penance all night through in the death-chamber of his divine Juliet.

This crazy woman seems to have been capricious in everything.  She made and broke liaisons with amazing rapidity while undergoing a compulsory sojourn at Coppet.  She formed there an attachment for the son of a person named M. Baranti, which very nearly cheated Rocca from becoming her husband, and the faithless Benjamin Constant from being, erroneously perhaps, associated with her name as the author of the manuscript of St. Helen, and she the notoriety of writing “Ten Years of Exile,” which was published after her death.

The youthful Baranti found no scope for his talents at Coppet, and being offered an inducement to go to the metropolis so that he might have larger opportunities of advancement, he abandoned the famous authoress, and she, in loving despair, was seized with the impulse to immortalise his severance by attempting suicide, and thereby ending her passion for liaisons, virulence, and fame.  The attempt, presumably feeble, left her long years of mischievous mania for attack on the supposed author of all her woes.  She readily found amongst his enemies (and thus the enemies of France) those who yearned with her in the hope she freely and openly expressed that her native land should suffer defeats, and in this her desire was fully acquiesced in by the combination of hysterical and purblind Kings, aided by a coterie of irreconcilables, who welcomed the destruction of their fatherland in order that the man who had made it the glory and the envy of the world should be driven from it.  Many of these creatures were members of the same Senate who, a few years previously, sent Napoleon a fervent address couched in grovelling language, imploring him to cement the hold his personality had on the national life.  The following is what they say, and what they ask him to do:-“You have brought us out of the chaos of the past, you have made us bless the benefits of the present.  Great man, complete your work, and make it as immortal as your glory!”

The authors of this whining appeal are worthy to be associated with the traitorous daughter of Jacques Necker, Minister of Finance to Louis XVI., and of those apoplectic monarchs who sought her guilty and inflammatory aid.

Then we come to another female celebrity, though less notable than Madame de Stael, who is regarded by the traducers of Napoleon as a historian because she wrote in her memoirs that which they wished the world to think of him, and because they flattered themselves that it exculpated them from the charge of injustice and mere hatred.  Madame de Stael’s book, “Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise,” made its appearance.  Its violent characteristics inflamed Charles de Remusat to urge his mother to enter into competition with this work, the result being the production of Madame de Remusat’s memoirs, edited by her grandson, M. Paul de Remusat.  Charles (her son) had reproached her for having destroyed memoirs she had written previously, but lurking in her mind was the thought of all the favours she and her family had received, and her correspondence, teeming with adulation for the man whom she was now induced to declaim against.  The knowledge that she was about to expose her perfidy “worried” her, and she wrote to Charles thus:-“If it should happen that some day my son were to publish all this, what would people think of me?” and the son, obviously influenced by the mother’s fears, delayed until the fall of the Second Empire the publication of one of the most unreliable and barefaced calumnies ever produced against a great benefactor.

In her memoirs she says that she and her husband excited general envy by the high position the First Consul had given them.  She was first Lady in Waiting, and subsequently Lady of the Household, her husband being “attached to Napoleon’s household.”  She says that she was witty and of a refined mind, and though she was less “good-looking” than her companions, she had the advantage of being able to “charm his mind,” and she was almost the only woman with whom he condescended to converse.  She relates residing in the camp at Boulogne “and having breakfast and dinner daily with Bonaparte.”  In the evenings they used to “discuss philosophy, literature, and art, or listen to the First Consul relating about the years of his youth and early achievements.”

No doubt the young Madame de Remusat became assured in the same way as Madame de Stael that she would one day be raised to heights of glory unequalled in history, and the disappointment embittered her.  She admits that she “suffered on account of blighted hopes and deceived affections and the failure of her calculations.”  Moreover, Josephine had an eye on the lady whose husband in evil times sought her influence with Napoleon to stretch out a helping hand and save them from the poverty by which they were beset.  Napoleon’s big heart spontaneously responded to the appeal of his fascinating spouse, the result being that favours were heaped upon M. de Remusat and his wife from time to time, and Josephine’s goodness was repaid by seeing Madame in feline fashion purring at her Imperial master’s affections, and on the authority of Madame de Remusat she “becomes cold and jealous.”  Finding that Napoleon did not appreciate her love-making, she, like Madame de Stael under similar circumstances, took to intriguing, which got her quickly into disgrace.  She is anxious to make her fall as light as possible in the public eye, so relates that he told her that “his desire was to make her a great lady, but he could not be expected to do this unless she showed devotion.”  But in spite of the wife’s defection, as is always Napoleon’s way, he does not visit her sins on the husband, but raises him to the important posts of Grand Master of the Robes, High Chamberlain, and then Superintendent of Theatres, and in addition gave him large sums to keep up his status, and notwithstanding Josephine’s cause for “cold jealousy,” Madame de Remusat was generously kept in her service after Marie Louise had become Empress.  M. de Remusat remained in the Emperor’s service until the fall of the Empire, and then went over to Louis XVIII.  Both of these sycophants were content to accept the favours of the Imperial couple and eat their bread and cringe at their feet while they plotted with the plotters for the Emperor’s downfall.

Unhappily for the veracity and probity of Madame Remusat as a history writer, her letters containing notes jotted down day by day as they occurred have been published, and the memoirs put side by side with these throbbings of the heart reveal an incomparable baseness that makes one wonder at the reckless, blind partisanship which induced her descendants to give the memoirs to an intelligent public.

In the memoirs she says:-“Nothing is so base as his soul; it is closed against all generous impulses, and possesses no true grandeur.  I noticed that he always failed to understand and to admire a noble action;” and again she goes on to say that “In war he foresaw the means of calling away our attention from the reflections which, sooner or later, his government could not fail to suggest to us, and he reserved it in order to dazzle, or at least to enforce silence on us.  Bonaparte felt that he would be infallibly lost the day when his enforced inactivity enabled us to think both of him and of ourselves.”  “What a relief whenever the Emperor went away!  His absence always seemed to bring solace.  People breathed more freely.”

Now this would have been all very well.  It was the stereotyped phraseology of Napoleon’s avowed enemies.  He knew it, and viewed it with contempt and derision, and until Madame de Remusat and her snuffling, cringing husband became swollen with over-indulgence and smitten with wounded pride, they regarded language such as now appears in her memoirs as mere froth.  She practically says that she held the same views in 1818 as she did from 1802 to 1808, but when she wrote this she no doubt relied on her correspondence being kept snugly private or destroyed; but it has been published, and here are some amazing extracts from it:-

“I often think, my dear, of that Empire, the territory of which extends to Antwerp!  Consider what a man he must be who can rule it single-handed, and what few instances history offers like him!" “Whilst he creates, so to speak, new nations in his progress, people must be struck, from one end of Europe to the other, by the remarkably prosperous state of France.  Her Navy, formed in two years, after a ruinous revolution, and assuming at last a menacing attitude after so long, excited the scoffs of a shortsighted enemy.”

“When again I reflect on the peace we enjoy, our wise and moderate liberty, which is quite sufficient for me, the glory my country is covered with, the pomp and even the magnificence surrounding us, and in which I delight, because it is proof that success has crowned our efforts; when, in short, I consider that all this prosperity is the work of one man, I am filled with admiration and gratitude."

“What I write here, my dear, is, of course, strictly between ourselves, for many people would be anxious to ascribe to these feelings some other cause than that which really inspires them; besides, it seems to me that we are less eager to express the praises that come from the heart than those that proceed from the mind."

“Thank goodness, I am at last happy and contented!!  What a pleasure it is to see the Emperor again, and how much that pleasure will be felt here!  This splendid campaign, this glorious peace, this prompt return, all is really marvellous."

“Like woman, the French are rather impatient and exacting; it is true that the Emperor has spoilt us in the campaign; indeed, no lover was ever more anxious to gratify the wishes of his mistress than His Majesty to meet our desires.  You demand a prompt march?  Very well, the army that was at Boulogne will find itself, three weeks later, in Germany.  You ask for the capture of a town?  Here is the surrender of Ulm.  You are not satisfied!!  You are craving for more victories?  Here they are:  Here is Vienna which you wanted, and also a pitched battle, in order that no kind of success may be wanting.  Add to these a whole series of noble and generous deeds, of words full of grandeur and kindness, and always to the purpose, so much so that our hearts share also that glory, and can join it to all the national pride it arouses in us."

“I used to cry bitterly at that time, for I felt so affected that, had I met the Emperor at the moment, I should, I believe, have thrown my arms round his neck, although I should, afterwards, have been compelled to fall on my knees and ask pardon for my conduct."

So overcome with boundless admiration is she that her soul yearns for the gift of being able to do him full justice by writing a history, a panegyric, a book, in fact, that would show him to be immeasurably above all men living or dead.  She fears that people cannot see his nobility and greatness as she does.  She is bewildered and acclaims him a god.  Here is another outburst of passionate devotion:-

“That undaunted courage, carried even to rashness, and which was always crowned with success, that calm assurance in the midst of danger, with that wise foresight and that prompt resolution, arouse always new feelings of admiration which it seems can never be surpassed."

It will be seen her letters shape well for the fulfilment of the great ambition of her life, i.e., to picture him as he was.  The writing is good, the description picturesque, and I believe the impartial mind will also regard it as accurate.  She believes “that even persons who are hardest to please must be compelled to admit that he is a most amiable sovereign.”  She is smitten with the feeling of gratitude, and says it is so sweet that she really regards it as another favour.  She wishes her husband could “often secure some of those comforting smiles from the master,” and tells him he is “no fool to be fond of those smiles,” and promises to congratulate him if he secures some.

She asks God to watch over him (such will always be her prayer) when he is fighting and conquering.  Her heart is grieved when he is at a great distance from them.  She eulogises his great qualities to her son, and advises him “to study all that she was able to tell him of the Emperor, and write about it when he grew up,” and the boy exclaimed, “Mother, what you have told me sounds like one of Plutarch’s lives!”

But there comes a time when Napoleon sees that the price he has to pay for adulation is too high, for, like most over-pampered people, Madame de Remusat seems to have got the idea of equality badly into her head.  She became waspish, exacting, claiming more than her share of emoluments, seeking for attentions which her “amiable sovereign” saw in the fitness of things it would be folly to bestow.  She mistook wholesome justice for tyranny, defied discipline, and not only connived at treason, but prayed for the extinction of him against whom it was directed.  Disaster overtook him, he fell, and in her delirium of malice and joy she bethought it an opportune moment to write what are known as her memoirs, refuting therein all her former eulogies and opinions so vividly told in the “Letters of Madame de Remusat.”  Now that adversity so terrible overshadows the matchless hero of the letters, she throws every scruple aside, and warms to her task in writing unstinted, gross, and manifest libels.  Contrast with the “letters” these quotations from the memoirs.  She avows that “nothing is so base as his soul.  It is closed against all generous impulses; he never could admire a noble action.”  “He possesses an innate depravity of nature, and has a special taste for evil.”  “His absence brought solace, and made people breathe freely.”  “He is devoid of every kind of personal courage, and generous impulses are foreign to him.”  “He put a feeling of restraint into everybody that approached him.”  “He was feared everywhere.”  “He delighted to excite fear.”  “He did not like to make people comfortable.”  “He was afraid of the least familiarity.”  This latter grievance, combined of course with the rest, is quite significant, and we are justified in assuming that the Lady in Waiting has been taking liberties, and has been deservedly snubbed by His Imperial Majesty.  It is perhaps necessary to pause here and remind the reader that on the authority of her son, and subsequently of her grandson, these memoirs were written entirely “without malice,” and the sole object of writing them at all was that “the truth should be told.”

Very well then.  Are we to believe the letters or the memoirs, because in the former she over and over again declares that “his comely manners were irresistible”; but in the memoirs with audacious bitterness she affirms “not only is he ill-mannered but brutal.”

Such effrontery is beyond criticism.  She finds it “impossible to depict the disinterested loyalty with which she longed for the King’s return,” and describes the hero of her letters as a ruthless destroyer of all worth, and being brought so low, she is straitened by the demands of “truth” and “grows quite disheartened.”

It will be observed that it is always truth which is the abiding motive, it matters not whether it is letters or memoirs.  She avows it is “truth” she writes.  “The love of truth,” says the editor in his preface, “gave her courage to persevere in her task for more than two years.”  That is, it took her more than two years to write the “truths” contained in the memoirs disavowing the “truths” so vehemently given in the letters; the former book pregnant with the bitterness of a writer without heart and principle, and with political and personal motives running through its pages like a canker, while the latter, radiant in luxuriant adulation, gapes at her memory with retributive justice.

The renegade son served the renegade and ungrateful mother ill when he advised her to write what is a barefaced recantation of her former statements.  Napoleon has said that “People are rarely drawn to you by favours conferred upon them.”  He had many examples of this truth, but none more striking than the above.  Madame de Remusat and her husband were raised from poverty to affluence by Napoleon, and the memory of all the favours that were showered upon them by the man she declares she loved should have kept them from hate and disloyalty, and forbidden the writing of such unworthy vitupérations against him.