rises produced by battles. He has
known how to make truces, but he has never said sincerely, enough;
and his character, irreconcileable with the rest of the creation, is
like the Greek fire, which no strength in nature has been known to
extinguish.

END OF THE FIRST PART.

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.

There is at this place in the manuscript a considerable vacuum, of
which I have already given an explanation*, and which I am not
sufficiently informed to make the attempt to fill up. But to put the
reader in a situation to follow my mother's narrative, I will run
over rapidly the principal circumstances of her life during the five
years which separate the first part of these memoirs from the
second.

* See the Preface.

On her return to Switzerland after the death of her father, the
first desire she felt was to seek some alleviation of her sorrow in
giving to the world the portrait of him whom she had just lost, and
in collecting the last traces of his thoughts. In the Autumn of
1804, she published the MSS. of her father, with a sketch of his
public and private character.

My mother's health, impaired by misfortune, necessitated her to go
and breathe the air of the South. She set out for Italy. The
beautiful sky of Naples, the recollections of antiquity, and the
chefs-d'oeuvre of art, opened to her new sources of enjoyment, to
which she had been hitherto a stranger; her soul, overwhelmed with
grief, seemed to revive to these new impressions, and she recovered
sufficient strength to think and to write. During this journey, she
was treated by the diplomatic agents of France without favor, but
without injustice. She was interdicted a residence at Paris; she was
banished from her friends and her habits; but tyranny had not, at
least at that time, pursued her beyond the Alps; persecution had not
as yet been established as a system, as it was afterwards. I even
feel a real pleasure in mentioning that some letters of
recommendation sent her by Joseph Bonaparte, contributed to render
her residence at Rome more agreeable.

She returned from Italy in the summer of 1805, and passed a year at
Coppet and Geneva, where several of her friends were collected.
During this period she began to write Corinne.

During the following year, her attachment to France, that feeling
which had so much power over her heart, made her quit Geneva and go
nearer to Paris, to the distance of forty leagues from it, which was
still