Posterity is not so fair in its judgments as has been held; there are passions, infatuations, errors of distance even as there are passions and errors of proximity. When posterity admires without reserve, it is scandalized that the contemporaries of the man admired should not have had the same idea of that man as itself. This can be explained, however: the things which offended one in that person are past; his infirmities have died with him; all that remains of him is his imperishable life; but the evil which he caused is none the less real: evil in itself and in its essence, and especially for those who endured it. It is the style of the day to magnify Bonaparte's victories: the sufferers have disappeared; we no longer hear the imprecations, the cries of pain and distress of the victims; we no longer see France exhausted, with only women to till her soil; we no longer see parents arrested as a pledge for their sons, the inhabitants of the villages made jointly and severally responsible for the penalties applicable to a rebellious recruit; we no longer see those conscription placards posted at the street-corners, the passers-by gathered before those enormous lists of dead, seeking in consternation the names of their children, their brothers, their friends, their neighbours. We forget that the whole population bewailed the triumphs; we forget that the slightest allusion against Bonaparte on the stage which had escaped the censors was hailed with rapture; we forget that the people, the Court, the generals, the ministers, Napoleon's relations were weary of his oppressions and his conquests, weary of that game always being won and always being played, of that existence brought into question each morning anew, thanks to the impossibility of repose. The reality of our sufferings is demonstrated by the catastrophe itself: if France had been infatuated with Bonaparte, would she twice have abandoned him, abruptly, completely, without making one last effort to keep him? If France owed all to Bonaparte: glory, liberty, order, prosperity, industry, commerce, manufactures, monuments, literature, fine arts; if, before his time, the nation had done nothing itself; if the Republic, destitute of genius and courage, had neither defended nor enlarged the territory: then France must have been very ungrateful, very cowardly, to allow Napoleon to fall into the hands of his enemies, or, at least, not to protest against the captivity of so great a benefactor? [Sidenote: Feeling against Napoleon.] This reproach, which might justly be made against us, is not made against us, however: and why? Because it is evident that, at the moment of his fall, France did not desire to defend Napoleon; in our bitter mortification, we beheld in him only the author and the contemner of our wretchedness. The Allies did not defeat us: we ourselves, choosing between two scourges, renounced shedding our blood, which had ceased to flow for our liberties.