"For a long time, Bonaparte, who had seized upon the government, had been progressing towards tyranny. The most opposite parties became incensed against him and, while the bulk of the citizens were still allowing themselves to be enervated by the tranquillity which was promised them, the Republicans and the Royalists desired an inversion. M. de Montmorency belonged to the latter by his birth, his connections and his opinions. Madame Récamier cared for politics only through her generous interest in the vanquished of all parties. The independence of her character made her averse to the Court of Napoleon, of which she had refused to form part M. de Montmorency conceived the idea of confiding his hopes to her, painted the restoration of the Bourbons to her in colours calculated to arouse her enthusiasm, and charged her to bring together two men at that time of importance in France, Moreau and Bernadotte, to see if they could unite against Bonaparte. She was intimately acquainted with Bernadotte, who has since become Prince Royal of Sweden. Something chivalrous in his appearance, something noble in his manners, something very subtle in his intelligence, something declamatory in his conversation make him a remarkable man. Courageous in battle, bold in speech, but timid in actions which are not military, irresolute in all his designs, he has one thing which makes him very seductive at first sight, but which, at the same time, places an obstacle to any combination of plans with him, and that is a habit of haranguing, a relic of his revolutionary education which does not leave him. He sometimes has movements of real eloquence; he knows it, he loves this kind of success and, when he has entered upon the development of some general idea connected with what he has heard in the clubs or the rostrum, he loses sight of all that occupies him and is no longer anything but an impassioned orator. That is what he appeared in France during the early years of the reign of Bonaparte, whom he always hated and by whom he was suspected, and that again is what he has shown himself in these later days, amid the disorder of Europe, of which, nevertheless, we owe the liberation to him, because he reassured the foreigners by showing them a Frenchman ready to march against the tyrant of France and knowing how to say only such things as could have an influence for his nation's good.