I cannot acquiesce in the false praises with which men have insulted Bonaparte, while trying to justify everything in his conduct; I cannot surrender my reason nor go into ecstasies before that which arouses my horror or my pity. If I have succeeded in conveying what I have felt, there will remain of my portrait one of the leading figures in history; but I have adopted no part of the fantastic creature composed of lies: lies which I saw born, lies which, taken at first for what they were, passed in time to the state of truth through the infatuation and the imbecile credulity of mankind. I refuse to be a gull and to fall into a fit with admiration. I strive to paint persons conscientiously, without taking from them what they have, without giving them what they have not. If success were esteemed as innocence; if, debauching even posterity, it loaded it with its chains; if, a future slave, begotten by a slavish past, that suborned posterity became the accomplice of whosoever should have triumphed: where would be the right, where would be the reward of sacrifices? Good and evil becoming only relative qualities, all morality would be blotted out from human actions. That is the difficulty which is caused to the impartial writer by a brilliant renown; he keeps it on one side as much as he can, in order to lay bare the truth; but the glory returns like a golden haze and instantly covers the picture. * In order not to admit the diminution of territory and power which we owe to Bonaparte, the present generation consoles itself by imagining that he has given back to us in illustriousness what he has taken from us in strength: "Are we not from this time forward," it asks, "famed in the four quarters of the earth? Is not a Frenchman feared, remarked, sought out, known on every shore?"