on to the
influence he has wielded upon the movement of events. This has been
greater in the case of Napoleon than of any other personage in history.
The product of an era of convulsions, in all of whose changes he took
part, and which he at last closed by subjecting all ideas under a rule,
which at one time promised to be lasting, he, like Catiline, requires a
Sallust; like Charlemagne, an Eginhard; and like Alexander, a Quintus
Curtius. M. de Bourrienne has, indeed, after the manner of Commines,
shown him to us undisguised in his political manipulations and in the
private life of his Court. This is a great step towards a knowledge of
his individuality, but it is not enough. It is in a thorough
acquaintance with his private life that this disillusioned age will find
the secret springs of the drama of his marvelous career. The great men
of former ages were veiled from us by a cloud of prejudice which even the
good sense of Plutarch scarcely penetrated. Our age, more analytical and
freer from illusions, in the great man seeks to find the individual. It
is by this searching test that the present puts aside all illusions, and
that the future will seek to justify its judgments. In the council of
state, the statesman is in his robe, on the battlefield the warrior is
beneath his armor, but in his bedchamber, in his undress, we find the
man.

It has been said that no man is, a hero to his valet. It would give wide
latitude to a witty remark, which has become proverbial, to make it the
epigraph of these memoirs. The valet of a hero by that very fact is
something more than a valet. Amber is only earth, and Bologna stone only
a piece of rock; but the first gives out the perfume of the rose, and the
other flashes the rays of the sun. The character of a witness is
dignified by the solemnity of the scene and the greatness of the actor.
Even before reading the manuscript of M. Constant, we were strongly
persuaded that impressions so unusual and so striking would raise him to
the level of the occasion.

The reader can now judge of this for himself. These are the memoirs of
M. Constant,--autographic memoirs of one still living, who has written
them to preserve his recollections. It is the private history, the
familiar life, the leisure moments, passed in undress, of Napoleon, which
we now present to the public. It is Napoleon taken without a mask,
deprived of his general's sword, the consular purple, the imperial
crown,--Napoleon res