side, the physical suffering caused by my disease
had greatly increased, and I was compelled to remain in bed a long while.
I could, indeed, have triumphed over these physical sufferings however
cruel they might have been, but in the frightful complications of my
position I was reduced to a condition of idiocy; I saw nothing of what
was around me; I heard nothing of what was said; and after this statement
the reader will surely not expect that I shall have anything to say about
the farewell of the Emperor to his old and faithful guard, an account of
which, moreover, has been often enough published for the facts to be well
known concerning this event, which, besides, took place in public. Here
my Memoirs might well close; but the reader, I well believe, cannot
refuse me his attention a few moments longer, that I may recall some
facts which I have a right to explain, and to relate some incidents
concerning the return from the Island of Elba. I, therefore, now
continue my remarks on the first of these heads, and the second will be
the subject of the next chapter.

The Emperor had then already started; and as for myself, shut up alone,
my country house became henceforth a sad residence to me. I held no
communication with any one whatever, read no news, and sought to learn
none. At the end of a short time I received a visit from one of my
friends from Paris, who said to me that the journals spoke of my conduct
without understanding it, and that they condemned it severely. He added
that it was M. de Turenne who had sent to the editors the note in which
I had been so heavily censured. I must say that I did not believe this;
I knew M. de Turenne too well to think him capable of a proceeding so
dishonorable, inasmuch as I had frankly explained everything to him, when
he made the answer I gave above. But however the evil came, it was
nevertheless done; and by the incredible complications of my position I
found myself compelled to keep silence. Nothing certainly would have
been easier than to repel the calumny by an exact rehearsal of the facts;
but should I justify myself in this manner by, so to speak, accusing the
Emperor at a moment especially when the Emperor's enemies manifested much
bitterness? When I saw such a great man made a mark for the shafts of
calumny, I, who was so contemptible and insignificant among the crowd,
could surely allow a few of these envenomed shafts to fall on me. To-day
the time has come to tell the tr