aid hold, to charge him with imaginary
faults. What will appear surprising is, that, with the character for
negation and dissimulation ascribed to him, he was capable of
indiscretions.

Napoleon conceived in secret, and conducted to their close in mystery,
schemes, that did not call his passions into play, because then he
never ceased to be master of himself: but it was excessively rare for
him, to preserve a continued, and complete dissimulation in affairs,
that strongly agitated his soul. The object, on which he was then
occupied, assailed his mind, and heated his imagination: his head,
continually at work, abounded in ideas, that diffused themselves in
spite of him, and displayed themselves externally by broken words, and
demonstrations of joy or anger, that afforded a clew to his designs,
and entirely destroyed the mystery, in which he would have enveloped
them.

This narration, which I would not interrupt, has made me lose sight of
Napoleon. I left him meditating the constitution he had promised the
French, and now return to him.

Napoleon had at first announced his intention of amalgamating the
ancient constitutions with the charter, and composing from the whole a
new constitution, which should be subjected to the free discussion of
the delegates of the nation. But he thought, that present
circumstances, and the agitation of men's minds, would not permit
subjects of such high importance, to be debated publicly without
danger; and he resolved to confine himself for the moment, to sanction
by a particular act, supplementary to the constitutions of the empire,
the new guarantees, that he had promised the nation.

Napoleon was swayed also by another consideration. He considered the
constitutions of the empire as the title-deeds of his crown; and he
was afraid, if he annulled them, that he should effect a sort of
novation, that would give him the appearance of beginning a new reign.
For Napoleon, such is human weakness, after having devoted to ridicule
the pretensions of "_the King of Hartwell_," was inclined to persuade
himself, that his own reign had not been interrupted by his residence
in the island of Elba.

The Emperor had entrusted to M. Benjamin Constant, and to a committee
composed of ministers of state, the double task of preparing the bases
of a new constitution. After having seen and amalgamated their
labours, he subjected the result to the examination of the council of
state, and of the council of m