thoughts, and bold, ingenious,
or sublime expressions. With persons indifferent to
him, or whose nullity he discerned, his phrases,
scarcely begun, were never finished: his ideas
turned only on insignificant, common-place matters,
which, by way of amusing himself, he was apt to
season with biting sarcasm, or jokes more whimsical
than witty.

This explains the contradictions between the
different opinions given of Napoleon's
understanding by foreigners introduced at his
court.]

Thus M. Benjamin Constant was subjugated: he arrived at the Tuileries
with repugnance, he quitted the palace an enthusiast.

The next day he was named counsellor of state: and this favour he owed
to no base submissions, as his enemies have pretended, but to his
learning, and to the desire the Emperor had of giving to public
opinion, and to M. B. Constant himself, a pledge of his having
forgotten the past; a pledge so much the more meritorious, as the
Emperor, independently of the Philippic launched against him by this
writer on the 19th of March, had besides before his eyes a letter in
his own hand to M. de Blacas, the subject and expressions of which
were of a nature, to inspire Napoleon with something more than
aversion for its author.

M. de Blacas had left in his boxes a great number of papers. The
Emperor directed the Duke of Otranto to examine them. Of this he
immediately repented, and sent for them again. Part fell to our share:
the rest were delivered to the Duke of Vicenza. Their examination
afforded nothing interesting. The Emperor, disappointed, accused M.
Fouche of having removed the important papers. Those we inspected
consisted only of private reports, and confidential and anonymous
notes. The hatred of the revolution pervaded every line, every word.
The writers did not dare to propose plainly the revocation of the
Charter, and the abolition of the new institutions; but they declared
without any circumlocution, that the dynasty of the Bourbons would
never be secure with the existing laws; and that it was necessary, to
distrust and get rid of the men of the revolution. More effectually to
know and persecute these, M. de Blacas had caused to be disinterred
from the archives of the cabinet, and of the ministers, the document