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Commencement of opposition in the Tribunate—My first persecution on that account—Fouche.

Some of the tribunes, who attached a real meaning to the constitution, were desirous of establishing in their assembly an opposition analogous to that of England; as if the rights, which that constitution professed to secure, had anything of reality in them, and the pretended division of the bodies of the state were anything more than a mere affair of etiquette, a distinction between the different anti-chambers of the first consul, in which magistrates under different names could hold together, I confess that I saw with pleasure the aversion entertained by a small number of the tribunes, to rival the counsellors of state in servility. I had especially a strong belief that those who had previously allowed themselves to be carried too far in their love for the republic would continue faithful to their opinions, when they became the weakest, and the most threatened.

One of these tribunes, a friend of liberty, and endowed with one of the most remarkable understandings ever bestowed upon man, M. Benjamin Constant, consulted me upon a speech which he purposed to deliver, for the purpose of signalizing the dawn of tyranny: I encouraged him in it with all the strength of my conviction. However, as it was well known that he was one of my intimate friends, I could not help dreading what might happen to me in consequence. I was vulnerable in my taste for society. Montaigne said formerly, I am a Frenchman through Paris: and if he thought so three centuries ago, what must it be now, when we see so many persons of extraordinary intellect collected in one city, and so many accustomed to employ that intellect in adding to the pleasures of conversation. The demon of ennui has always pursued me; by the terror with which he inspires me, I could alone have been capable of bending the knee to tyranny, if the example of my father, and his blood which flows in my veins, had not enabled me to triumph over this weakness. Be that as it may, Bonaparte knew this foible of mine perfectly: he discerns quickly the weak side of any one; for it is by their weaknesses that he subjugates people to his sway. To the power with which he threatens, to the treasures with which he dazzles, he joins the dispensation of ennui, and that is a source of real terror to the French. A residence at forty leagues from the capital, contrasted with the advantages collected in the most agreeable city in the world, fails not in the long run to shake the greater part of exiles, habituated from their infancy to the charms of a Parisian life.

On the eve of the day when Benjamin Constant was to deliver his speech, I had a party, among whom were Lucien Bonaparte, MM. ——— and several others, whose conversation in different degrees possesses that constant novelty of interest which is produced by the strength of ideas and the grace of expression. Every one of these persons, with the exception of Lucien, tired of being proscribed by the directory, was preparing to serve the new government, requiring only to be well rewarded for their devotion to its power. Benjamin Constant came up and whispered to me, "Your drawing room is now filled with persons with whom you are pleased: if I speak, tomorrow it will be deserted:—think well of it." "We must follow our conviction," said I to him. This reply was dictated by enthusiasm; but, I confess, if I had foreseen what I have suffered since that day, I should not have had the firmness to refuse M. Constant's offer of renouncing his project, in order not to compromise me.

At present, so far as opinion is affected, it is nothing to incur the disgrace of Bonaparte: he may make you perish, but he cannot deprive you of respect. Then, on the contrary, France was not enlightened as to his tyrannical views, and as all who had suffered from the revolution expected to obtain from him the return of a brother, or a friend, or the restoration of property, any one who was bold enough to resist him was branded with the name of Jacobin, and you were deprived of good society along with the countenance of the government: an intolerable situation, particularly for a woman, and of which no one can know the misery without having experienced it.

On the day when the signal of opposition was exhibited in the tribunate by my friend, I had invited several persons whose society I was fond of, but all of whom were attached to the new government. At five o'clock I had received ten notes of apology; the first and second I bore tolerably well, but as they succeeded each other rapidly, I began to be alarmed. In vain did I appeal to my conscience, which advised me to renounce all the pleasures attached to the favour of Bonaparte: I was blamed by so many honorable people, that I knew not how to support myself on my own way of thinking. Bonaparte had as yet done nothing exactly culpable; many asserted that he preserved France from anarchy: in short, if at that moment he had signified to me any wish of reconciliation, I should have been delighted: but a step of that sort he will never take without exacting a degradation, and, to induce that degradation, he generally enters into such passions of authority, as terrify into yielding every thing. I do not wish by that to say that Bonaparte is not really passionate: what is not calculation in him is hatred, and hatred generally expresses itself in rage: but calculation is in him so much the strongest, that he never goes beyond what it is convenient for him to show, according to circumstances and persons. One day a friend of mine saw him storming at a commissary of war, who had not done his duty; scarcely had the poor man retired, trembling with apprehension, when Bonaparte turned round to one of his aides-du-camp, and said to him, laughing, I hope I have given him a fine fright; and yet the moment before, you would have believed that he was no longer master of himself.

When it suited the first consul to exhibit his ill-humour against me, he publicly reproached his brother Joseph for continuing to visit me. Joseph felt it necessary in consequence to absent himself from my house for several weeks, and his example was followed by three fourths of my acquaintance. Those who had been proscribed on the 18th Fructidor, pretended that at that period, I had been guilty of recommending M. de Talleyrand to Barras, for the ministry of foreign affairs: and yet, these people were then continually about that same Talleyrand, whom they accused me of having served. All those who behaved ill to me, were cautious in concealing that they did so for fear of incurring the displeasure of the first consul. Every day, however, they invented some new pretext to injure me, thus exerting all the energy of their political opinions against a defenceless and persecuted woman, and prostrating themselves at the feet of the vilest Jacobins, the moment the first consul had regenerated them by the baptism of his favor.

Fouche, the minister of police, sent for me to say, that the first consul suspected me of having excited my friend who had spoken in the tribunate. I replied to him, which was certainly the truth, that M. Constant was a man of too superior an understanding to make his opinions matter of reproach to a woman, and that besides, the speech in question contained absolutely nothing but reflections on the independence which every deliberative assembly ought to possess, and that there was not a word in it which could be construed into a personal reflection on the first consul. The minister admitted as much. I ventured to add some words on the respect due to the liberty of opinions in a legislative body; but I could easily perceive that he took no interest in these general considerations; he already knew perfectly well, that under the authority of the man whom he wished to serve, principles were out of the question, and he shaped his conduct accordingly. But as he is a man of transcendant understanding in matters of revolution, he had already laid it down as a system to do the least evil possible, the necessity of the object admitted. His preceding conduct certainly exhibited little feeling of morality, and he was frequently in the habit of talking of virtue as an old woman's story. A remarkable sagacity, however, always led him to choose the good as a reasonable thing, and his intelligence made him occasionally do what conscience would have dictated to others. He advised me to go into the country, and assured me, that in a few days, all would be quieted. But at my return, I was very far from finding it so.