He came
solely to make them exchange their tranquillity, their independence,
their language, their laws, their fortunes, their blood, and their
children, for the misfortune and the shame of being annihilated as
nations, and despised as men. He began finally that enterprize of
universal monarchy, which is the greatest scourge by which mankind
can be menaced, and the certain cause of eternal war.
None of the arts of peace at all suit Bonaparte: he finds no
amusement but in the violent crises produced by battles. He has
known how to make truces, but he has never said sincerely, enough;
and his character, irreconcileable with the rest of the creation, is
like the Greek fire, which no strength in nature has been known to
extinguish.
END OF THE FIRST PART.
ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.
There is at this place in the manuscript a considerable vacuum, of
which I have already given an explanation*, and which I am not
sufficiently informed to make the attempt to fill up. But to put the
reader in a situation to follow my mother's narrative, I will run
over rapidly the principal circumstances of her life during the five
years which separate the first part of these memoirs from the
second.
* See the Preface.
On her return to Switzerland after the death of her father, the
first desire she felt was to seek some alleviation of her sorrow in
giving to the world the portrait of him whom she had just lost, and
in collecting the last traces of his thoughts.
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