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Updated: June 23, 2025
Prince Napoleon blames M. Taine for quoting "eight times" 'Bourrienne's Memoirs, and then, letting his feelings loose, he takes advantage of the occasion and cruelly besmirches Bourrienne's name. Does he tell the truth or not? is he right at the bottom?
On the first discovery which Bonaparte made of Bourrienne's infidelity, Talleyrand complimented him upon not having suffered from it. "Do you not see," answered Bonaparte, "that it is also one of the extraordinary gifts of my extraordinary good fortune? "Even traitors are unable to betray me. Plots respect me as much as bullets."
Bonaparte perused this proclamation, and nodded his head in sign of approval. Then he looked at his watch. "Eleven o'clock," he said; "there is still time." Then, seating himself in Bourrienne's chair, he wrote a few words in the form of a note, sealed it, and wrote the address: "To the Citizen Barras."
I subjoin Madame de Bourrienne's notes, word for word: On the day after our second return from Germany, which was in May 1795, we mat Bonaparte in the Palais Royal, near a shop kept by a man named Girardin. Bonaparte embraced Bourrienne as a friend whom he loved and was glad to see. We went that evening to the Theatre Francais.
This is merely to say that we shall be quite satisfied with a family dinner." "What next?" "How do you mean?" "Shall I put, 'Liberty, equality, fraternity'?" "Or death," added Roland. "No," said Bonaparte; "give me the pen." He took the pen from Bourrienne's hands and wrote, "Ever yours, Bonaparte." Then, pushing away the paper, he added: "Address it, Bourrienne, and send an orderly with it."
The conversation turned upon the Directory. "Yes, truly," cried Bonaparte, in a loud voice, "I have good reason to complain; and, to pass from great to little things, look, I pray you, at Bourrienne's case. He possesses my most unbounded confidence. He alone is entrusted, under my orders, with all the details of the negotiation.
"You are a flatterer and a courtier," he said, playfully pinching Bourrienne's ear so violently that the latter was scarcely able to conceal a shriek of pain under a smile. "Yes, indeed, you are a regular courtier, and the republic has done well to banish you, for flattery is something very aristocratic, and injurious to our stiff republican dignity.
The person who came with the message to my house put many questions to Madame de Bourrienne's sister respecting my absence, and advised her, above all things, to conjure me not to follow the King, observing that the cause of Louis XVIII. was utterly lost, and that I should do well to retire quietly to Burgundy, as there was no doubt of my obtaining the Emperor's pardon.
It would have made a good frontispiece for Bourrienne's book too. And now, my dear Lannes, what shall we do with ourselves for the next five days? Get out your Baedecker and let us see this imperial city of the Lombards." "There's one matter we must arrange first," said Augereau; "we haven't any stable accommodations to speak of."
From whatever viewpoint he has looked back upon this, which he now believes to have been the crisis in his life, he is convinced that his mother's instinct saved him from a grievous mistake. The Scribner house, in its foreign-book department, had imported some copies of Bourrienne's Life of Napoleon, and a set had found its way to Bok's desk for advertising purposes.
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