others, whose conversation in different degrees
possesses that constant novelty of interest which is produced by the
strength of ideas and the grace of expression. Every one of these
persons, with the exception of Lucien, tired of being proscribed by
the directory, was preparing to serve the new government, requiring
only to be well rewarded for their devotion to its power. Benjamin
Constant came up and whispered to me, "Your drawing room is now
filled with persons with whom you are pleased: if I speak, tomorrow
it will be deserted:--think well of it." "We must follow our
conviction," said I to him. This reply was dictated by enthusiasm;
but, I confess, if I had foreseen what I have suffered since that
day, I should not have had the firmness to refuse M. Constant's
offer of renouncing his project, in order not to compromise me.

At present, so far as opinion is affected, it is nothing to incur
the disgrace of Bonaparte: he may make you perish, but he cannot
deprive you of respect. Then, on the contrary, France was not
enlightened as to his tyrannical views, and as all who had suffered
from the revolution expected to obtain from him the return of a
brother, or a friend, or the restoration of property, any one who
was bold enough to resist him was branded with the name of Jacobin,
and you were deprived of good society along with the countenance of
the government: an intolerable situation, particularly for a woman,
and of which no one can know the misery without having experienced
it.

On the day when the signal of opposition was exhibited in the
tribunate by my friend, I had invited several persons whose society
I was fond of, but all of whom were attached to the new government.
At five o'clock I had received ten notes of apology; the first and
second I bore tolerably well, but as they succeeded each other
rapidly, I began to be alarmed. In vain did I appeal to my
conscience, which advised me to renounce all the pleasures attached
to the favour of Bonaparte: I was blamed by so many honorable
people, that I knew not how to support myself on my own way of
thinking. Bonaparte had as yet done nothing exactly culpable; many
asserted that he preserved France from anarchy: in short, if at that
moment he had signified to me any wish of reconciliation, I should
have been delighted: but a step of that sort he will never take
without exacting a degradation, and, to induce that degradation, he
generally enters into such passions