s Napoleon had been treated as either a demon or
as a demi-god. The real facts of the case were not suited to the tastes
of either his enemies or his admirers. While the monarchs of Europe had
been disputing among themselves about the division of the spoils to be
obtained from France and from the unsettlement of the Continent, there
had arisen an extraordinarily clever and unscrupulous man who, by
alternately bribing and overthrowing the great monarchies, had soon made
himself master of the mainland. His admirers were unwilling to admit the
part played in his success by the jealousy of his foes of each other's
share in the booty, and they delighted to invest him with every great
quality which man could possess. His enemies were ready enough to allow
his military talents, but they wished to attribute the first success of
his not very deep policy to a marvellous duplicity, apparently considered
by them the more wicked as possessed by a parvenu emperor, and far
removed, in a moral point of view, from the statecraft so allowable in an
ancient monarchy. But for Napoleon himself and his family and Court
there was literally no limit to the really marvellous inventions of his
enemies. He might enter every capital on the Continent, but there was
some consolation in believing that he himself was a monster of
wickedness, and his Court but the scene of one long protracted orgie.

There was enough against the Emperor in the Memoirs to make them
comfortable reading for his opponents, though very many of the old
calumnies were disposed of in them. They contained indeed the nearest
approximation to the truth which had yet appeared. Metternich, who must
have been a good judge, as no man was better acquainted with what he
himself calls the "age of Napoleon," says of the Memoirs: "If you want
something to read, both interesting and amusing, get the Memoires de
Bourrienne. These are the only authentic Memoirs of Napoleon which have
yet appeared. The style is not brilliant, but that only makes them the
mere trustworthy." Indeed, Metternich himself in his own Memoirs often
follows a good deal in the line of Bourrienne: among many formal attacks,
every now and then he lapses into half involuntary and indirect praise of
his great antagonist, especially where he compares the men he had to deal
with in aftertimes with his former rapid and talented interlocutor. To
some even among the Bonapartists, Bourrienne was not altogether
distasteful. Lucien