To plunge from Bonaparte and the Empire into what followed them, is to plunge from reality into nothingness, from the summit of a mountain into the gulf. Did everything not end with Bonaparte? Ought I to speak of anything else? What could be of interest after him? Can there be any question of who or what, in the wake of such a man? Dante alone had the right to associate with the great poets in the regions of the afterlife. How can one speak of Louis XVIII instead of the Emperor? I am embarrassed when I think that I had to twitter along at that time with a crowd of miniscule creatures of whom I made one, dubious-seeming nocturnal beings as we were, in a landscape from which the great sun had departed.

The Bonapartists themselves had shrivelled. Their limbs were folded and contracted: a soul was missing from the new universe the moment Bonaparte withdrew his breath; objects faded now that they were no longer illuminated by the glow which had given them shape and colour. At the beginning of these Memoirs I had only myself to speak of: now there is always a kind of primacy in individual human solitude; then I was surrounded by miracles: those miracles sustained my voice; but in the days after the conquest of Egypt, after the battles of Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, after the retreat from Russia, after the taking of Paris, the return from Elba, the battle of Waterloo, the funeral on St Helena: what then? Portraits to which Molière’s genius alone could grant theatrical gravity!

In expressing our lack of worth, I have examined my conscience closely; I have asked myself whether I have not identified myself in a calculated manner with the nullity of those days, in order to claim the right to condemn others; persuaded as I was in petto (privately) that my name spoke for itself among all those unassuming souls. No: I am convinced that we will all vanish: firstly because we have not that in us with which to stay alive; secondly because the century, in which we are beginning or ending our days, lacks the means itself with which to keep us alive. Mutilated, worn out, despicable generations, without faith, dedicated to the nothingness they love, do not know how to grant anything immortality; they have no power to create a reputation; when you give ear to their speech you hear nothing: no sound issues from the lips of the dead.

However one thing strikes me: the little world, which I address now, was superior to the world which succeeded it in 1830: we were giants in comparison with the society of mites which it bred.

The Restoration offers at least one aspect from which one can retrieve something of importance: after the pride of a single man, that man being past, the pride of mankind was reborn. If despotism has been replaced by liberty, if we know something of freedom now, if we have lost the habit of crawling, if the laws of human nature are no longer unknown, it is to the Restoration that we are thus indebted. Let me throw myself into the throng, so that, to the best of my abilities, I too might revive the species if the individual is finished.

On then, let us pursue our task! Let us plunge with groans towards myself and my colleagues. You have seen me in the midst of my dreams; you will see me now in the midst of my reality; if it is less interesting, if I decline, reader, be just: take my subject’s part.