It was at this period that Bonaparte sent General Leclerc to Saint Domingo, and designated him in his decree our brother-in-law.  This first royal we, which associated the French with the prosperity of this family, was a most bitter pill to me.  He obliged his beautiful sister to accompany her husband to Saint Domingo, where her health was completely ruined:  a singular act of despotism for a man who is not accustomed to great severity of principles in those about his person; but he makes use of morality only to harass some and dazzle others.  A peace was in the sequel concluded with the chief of the negroes, Toussaint-Louverture.  This man was, no doubt, a great criminal, but Bonaparte had signed conditions with him, in complete violation of which Toussaint was conducted to a prison in France, where he ended his days in the most miserable manner.  Perhaps Bonaparte himself hardly recollects this crime, because he has been less reproached with it than others.

In a great forge, we see with astonishment the violence of the machines which are set in motion by a single will:  these hammers, those flatteners seem so many persons, or rather devouring animals.  Should you attempt to resist their force, they would annihilate you; notwithstanding, all this apparent fury is calculated beforehand, and a single mover gives action to these springs.  The tyranny of Bonaparte is represented to my eyes by this image; he makes thousands of men perish, as these wheels beat the iron, and his agents are the greater part of them equally insensible; the invisible impulse of these human machines proceeds from a will at once violent and methodical, which transforms moral life into its servile instrument.  Finally, to complete the comparison, it is sufficient to seize the mover to restore every thing to a state of repose.

CHAPTER 8.

Journey to Coppet.—­Preliminaries of peace with England.

I went, according to my usual happy custom, to spend the summer with my father.  I found him extremely indignant at the state of affairs; and as he had all his life been as much attached to real liberty as he detested popular anarchy, he felt inclined to draw his pen against the tyranny of one, after having so long fought against that of the many.  My father was fond of glory, and however prudent his character, hazards of every kind did not displease him, when the public esteem was to be deserved by incurring them, I was quite sensible of the danger to which any work of his which should displease the first consul, would expose myself; but I could not resolve to stifle this song of the swan, who wished to make himself heard once more on the tomb of French liberty.  I encouraged him therefore in his design, but we deferred to the following year the question whether what he wrote should be published.