These Memoirs, divided into books and parts, have been written at different times and in different places: each section naturally entails a kind of prologue which recalls the occurrences that have arisen since the last date and describes the place in which I resume the thread of my narrative. In this way the various events and the changeful circumstances of my life enter one into the other; it happens that, in moments of prosperity, I have to tell of times of penury, and that, in days of tribulation, I retrace my days of happiness. The diverse opinions formed in diverse periods of my life, my youth penetrating into my old age, the gravity of my years of experience casting a shadow over my lighter years, the rays of my sun, from its rise to its setting, intercrossing and commingling like the scattered reflections of my existence, all these give a sort of indefinable unity to my work; my cradle bears the mark of my tomb, my tomb of my cradle; my hardships become pleasures, my pleasures sorrows, and one no longer knows whether these Memoirs proceed from a dark or a hoary head. I do not say this in self-praise, for I do not know that it is good; I say what is the fact, what happened without reflection on my part, through the very fickleness of the tempests loosed against my bark, which often have left me but the rock that caused my shipwreck upon which to write this or that fragment of my life. I have applied to the writing of these Memoirs a really paternal predilection; I would wish to be able to rise at the ghostly hour to correct the proofs: the dead go fast. The notes accompanying the text are of three kinds: the first, printed at the end of each volume, consist of explanatory documents, proofs and illustrations; the second, printed at the foot of the pages, are contemporary with the text; the third, also printed as foot-notes, have been added after the text was written, and bear the date of the time and place at which they were written. A year or two of solitude spent in some corner of the earth would suffice to enable me to complete my Memoirs; but the only period of rest that I have known was the nine months during which I slept in my mother's womb: it is probable that I shall not recover this antenatal rest until I lie in the entrails of our common mother after death.