* This postscript is easily understood; its object was to prevent me from going to England.

The stale hypocrisy with which I was told that the air of this country did not agree with me, and the denial of the real cause of the suppression of my book, are worthy of remark.  In fact, the minister of police had shown more frankness in expressing himself verbally respecting me:  he asked, why I never named the emperor or the army in my work on Germany?  On its being objected that the work being purely literary, I could not well have introduced such subjects, “Do you think,” then replied the minister, “that we have made war for eighteen years in Germany, and that a person of such celebrity should print a book upon it, without saying a word about us?  This book shall be destroyed, and the author deserves to be sent to Vincennes.”

On receiving the letter of the minister of police, I paid no attention to any part but that passage of it which interdicted me the ports of the Channel.  I had already learned, that suspecting my intention of going to England, they would endeavour to prevent me.  This new mortification was really above my strength to bear; on quitting my native country, I must go to that of my adoption; in banishing myself from the friends of my whole life, I required at least to find those friends of whatever is good and noble, with whom, without knowing them personally, the soul always sympathises.  I saw at once all that supported my imagination crumbling to pieces; for a moment longer I would have embarked on board any vessel bound for America, in the hope of her being captured on her passage; but I was too much shaken to decide at once on so strong a resolution; and as the two alternatives of America and Coppet were the only ones that were left me, I determined on accepting the latter; for a profound sentiment always attracted me to Coppet, in spite of the disagreeables I was there subjected to.

My two sons both endeavoured to see the emperor at Fontainbleau, where he then was; they were told they would be arrested if they remained there; a fortiori, I was interdicted from going to it myself.  I was obliged to return into Switzerland from Blois, where I was, without approaching Paris nearer than forty leagues.  The minister of police had given notice, in corsair terms, that at thirty-eight leagues I was a good prize.  In this manner, when the emperor exercises the arbitrary power of banishment, neither the exiled persons, nor their friends, nor even their children, can reach his presence to plead the cause of the unfortunates who are thus torn from the objects of their affection and their habits; and these sentences of exile, which are now irrevocable, particularly where women are the objects, and which the emperor himself has rightly termed proscriptions, are pronounced without the possibility of making any justification be heard, supposing always that the crime of having displeased the emperor admits of any.