ith the rest,
is quite significant, and we are justified in assuming that the Lady
in Waiting has been taking liberties, and has been deservedly snubbed
by His Imperial Majesty. It is perhaps necessary to pause here and
remind the reader that on the authority of her son, and subsequently
of her grandson, these memoirs were written entirely "without malice,"
and the sole object of writing them at all was that "the truth should
be told."

Very well then. Are we to believe the letters or the memoirs, because
in the former she over and over again declares that "his comely
manners were irresistible"; but in the memoirs with audacious
bitterness she affirms "not only is he ill-mannered but brutal."

Such effrontery is beyond criticism. She finds it "impossible to
depict the disinterested loyalty with which she longed for the King's
return," and describes the hero of her letters as a ruthless destroyer
of all worth, and being brought so low, she is straitened by the
demands of "truth" and "grows quite disheartened."

It will be observed that it is always truth which is the abiding
motive, it matters not whether it is letters or memoirs. She avows it
is "truth" she writes. "The love of truth," says the editor in his
preface, "gave her courage to persevere in her task for more than two
years." That is, it took her more than two years to write the "truths"
contained in the memoirs disavowing the "truths" so vehemently given
in the letters; the former book pregnant with the bitterness of a
writer without heart and principle, and with political and personal
motives running through its pages like a canker, while the latter,
radiant in luxuriant adulation, gapes at her memory with retributive
justice.

The renegade son served the renegade and ungrateful mother ill when he
advised her to write what is a barefaced recantation of her former
statements. Napoleon has said that "People are rarely drawn to you by
favours conferred upon them." He had many examples of this truth, but
none more striking than the above. Madame de Remusat and her husband
were raised from poverty to affluence by Napoleon, and the memory of
all the favours that were showered upon them by the man she declares
she loved should have kept them from hate and disloyalty, and
forbidden the writing of such unworthy vituperations against him.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Madame de Remusat burnt her original memoirs during the Hundred
Days, doubtless because she had in her min