a work, undertaken so many years after the events, it was
inevitable that many errors should be made, and that many statements
should be at least debatable. But on close investigation the work stands
the attack in a way that would be impossible unless it had really been
written by a person in the peculiar position occupied by Bourrienne. He
has assuredly not exaggerated that position: he really, says Lucien
Bonaparte, treated as equal with equal with Napoleon during a part of his
career, and he certainly was the nearest friend and confidant that
Napoleon ever had in his life.

Where he fails, or where the Bonapartist fire is most telling, is in the
account of the Egyptian expedition. It may seem odd that he should have
forgotten, even in some thirty years, details such as the way in which
the sick were removed; but such matters were not in his province; and it
would be easy to match similar omissions in other works, such as the
accounts of the Crimea, and still more of the Peninsula. It is with his
personal relations with Napoleon that we are most concerned, and it is in
them that his account receives most corroboration.

It may be interesting to see what has been said of the Memoirs by other
writers. We have quoted Metternich, and Lucien Bonaparte; let us hear
Meneval, his successor, who remained faithful to his master to the end:
"Absolute confidence cannot be given to statements contained in Memoirs
published under the name of a man who has not composed them. It is known
that the editor of these Memoirs offered to M. de Bourrienne, who had
then taken refuge in Holstein from his creditors, a sum said to be thirty
thousand francs to obtain his signature to them, with some notes and
addenda. M. de Bourrienne was already attacked by the disease from which
he died a few years latter in a maison de sante at Caen. Many literary
men co-operated in the preparation of his Memoirs. In 1825 I met M. de
Bourrienne in Paris. He told me it had been suggested to him to write
against the Emperor. 'Notwithstanding the harm he has done me,' said he,
'I would never do so. Sooner may my hand be withered.' If M. de
Bourrienne had prepared his Memoirs himself, he would not have stated
that while he was the Emperor's minister at Hamburg he worked with the
agents of the Comte de Lille (Louis XVIII.) at the preparation of
proclamations in favour of that Prince, and that in 1814 he accepted the
thanks of the King, Louis XVIII., for doing so;