ng to birth amid the storm, I lived at Auteuil,
and visited Madame Helvetius, where freethinkers in every branch of
intellectual activity were to be met with. Nothing could be rarer than a
freethinker, even after Voltaire's day. A man who will face death
without trembling dare not say anything out of the ordinary about
morals. That very same respect for Humanity which prompts him to go
forth to his death, makes him bow to public opinion. In those days I
enjoyed listening to the talk of Volney, Cabanis, and Tracy. Disciples
of the great Condillac, they regarded the senses as the origin of all
our knowledge. They called themselves ideologists, were the most
honourable people in the world, and grieved the vulgar minds by refusing
them immortality. For the majority of people, though they do not know
what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.
During the turmoil, our small philosophical society was sometimes
disturbed in the peaceful shades of Auteuil by patrols of patriots.
Condorcet, our great man, was an outlaw. I myself was regarded as
suspect by the friends of the people, who, in spite of my rustic
appearance and my frieze coat, believed me to be an aristocrat, and I
confess that independence of thought is the proudest of all
aristocracies.

"One evening while I was stealthily watching the dryads of Boulogne, who
gleamed amid the leaves like the moon rising above the horizon, I was
arrested as a suspect, and put in prison. It was a pure
misunderstanding; but the Jacobins of those days, like the monks whose
place they had usurped, laid great stress on unity of obedience. After
the death of Madame Helvetius our society gathered together in the
_salon_ of Madame de Condorcet. Bonaparte did not disdain to chat with
us sometimes.

"Recognizing him to be a great man, we thought him an ideologist like
ourselves. Our influence in the land was considerable. We used it in his
favour, and urged him towards the Imperial throne, thinking to display
to the world a second Marcus Aurelius. We counted on him to establish
universal peace; he did not fulfil our expectations, and we were
wrong-headed enough to be wroth with him for our own mistake.

"Without any doubt he greatly surpassed all other men in quickness of
intelligence, depth of dissimulation, and capacity for action. What
made him an accomplished ruler was that he lived entirely in the present
moment, and had no thoughts for anything beyond the immed