Happy, at least, my life, which was not troubled by fear, nor attacked by contagion, nor carried away by examples! The satisfaction which I experience to-day at what I did then is my warrant that my conscience is no illusion. More content than all those potentates, than all those nations fallen at the feet of the glorious soldier, I turn again with pardonable pride to this page, which I have retained as my only belonging and which I owe only to myself. In 1807, with my heart still moved by the murder which I have just related, I wrote the following lines; they caused the _Mercure_ to be suppressed, and jeopardized my liberty once more: [Sidenote: I utter my protest.] "When, amid the silence of abjection, no sound is heard save that of the chains of the slave and the voice of the informer; when all tremble before the tyrant, and when it is as dangerous to incur his favour as to deserve his displeasure, the historian appears, entrusted with the vengeance of the nations. Nero prospers in vain, Tacitus already is born within the Empire; he grows up unknown beside the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just Providence has surrendered to an obscure child the glory of the master of the world. If the historian's part is fine, it is often dangerous; but there are altars such as that of honour which, although deserted, demand further sacrifices: the god is not annihilated because the temple is empty. Wherever there remains a chance for fortune, there is no heroism in trying it; magnanimous actions are those of which adversity and death are the foreseen result After all, what do reverses matter, if our name, pronounced by posterity, makes one generous heart beat two thousand years after our life[644]?" The death of the Duc d'Enghien, by introducing a new principle into Bonaparte's conduct, marred the correctness of his intelligence: he was obliged to adopt as a shield maxims of which he had not the whole force at his disposal, for his glory and his genius incessantly blunted them. He was looked upon with suspicion, with fear; men lost confidence in him and in his destiny; he was constrained to see, if not to seek out, men whom he would never have seen, and who, through his action, considered themselves to have become his equals: the contagion of their defilement was overtaking him. His great qualities remained the same, but his good dispositions became impaired and no longer upheld his great qualities: under the influence of the corruption of that original stain his nature deteriorated. God commanded his angels to disturb the harmonies of that world, to change its laws, to tilt it on its poles. As Milton says: