I have meddled with peace and war; I have signed treaties and protocols, and published numerous works the while. I have been initiated into secrets of parties, of Court and of State: I have been a close observer of the rarest miseries, the highest fortunes, the greatest renowns. I have taken part in sieges, congresses, conclaves, in the restoration and overturning of thrones. I have made history, and I could write it. And my life, solitary, dreamy, poetic, has gone on through this world of realities, catastrophes, tumult, uproar, in the company of the sons of my dreams, Chactas, René, Eudore, Aben-Hamet, of the daughters of my imagination, Atala, Amélie, Blanca, Velléda, Cymodocée. Of my age and not of it, I perhaps exercised upon it, without either wishing or seeking to do so, a three-fold influence, religious, political and literary. There are left to me but four or five contemporaries of established fame. Alfieri, Canova and Monti have disappeared; Italy has only Pindemonte and Manzoni left over from her brilliant days. Pellico has wasted his best days in the cells of the Spielberg: the talents of the land that gave Dante birth are condemned to silence or driven to languish on foreign soil; Lord Byron and Mr. Canning have died young; Walter Scott is no longer with us; Goethe has left us, full of years and glory. France has scarce anything remaining from her abundant past; she is commencing a new era, while I linger behind to bury my period, like the old priest who, in the sack of Béziers, was to toll the bell before falling himself when the last citizen had expired. When death lowers the curtain between me and the world, it shall be found that my drama was divided into three acts. From my early youth until 1800, I was a soldier and a traveller; from 1800 to 1811, under the Consulate and the Empire, my life was given to literature; from the Restoration to the present day, it has been devoted to politics. During each of my three successive careers, I have always placed some great task before myself: as a traveller, I aimed at discovering the polar world; as a man of letters, I have striven to reconstruct religion from its ruins; as a statesman, I have endeavoured to give to the people the true system of representative monarchy, accompanied with its various liberties: I have at least assisted in winning that liberty which is worth all the others, which replaces them and serves in stead of any constitution, the liberty of the press. When, frequently, I have failed in my enterprises, there has been in my case a failure of destiny. The foreigners who have succeeded in their designs were aided by fortune; they had powerful friends behind them and a peaceful country. I have been less lucky.