Since my work on Literature, I have published Delphine, Corinne, and finally my work on Germany, which was suppressed at the moment it was about to make its appearance.  But although this last work has occasioned me the most bitter persecution, literature does not appear to me to be less a source of enjoyment and respect, even for a female.  What I have suffered in life, I attribute to the circumstances which associated me, almost at my entry into the world, with the interests of liberty, which were supported by my father and his friends; but the kind of talent which has made me talked of as a writer, has always been to me a source of greater pleasure than pain.  The criticisms of which one’s works are the objects, can be very easily borne, when one is possessed of some elevation of soul, and when one is more attached to noble ideas for themselves, than for the success which their promulgation can procure us.  Besides, the public, at the end of a certain time, appears to me always equitable; self-love must accustom itself to do credit to praise; for in due time, we obtain as much of that as we deserve.  Finally, if we should have even to complain long of injustice, I conceive no better asylum against it than philosophical meditation, and the emotion of eloquence.  These faculties place at our disposal a whole world of truths and sentiments, in which we can breathe at perfect freedom.

CHAPTER 4.

Conversation of my father with Bonaparte.—­Campaign of Marengo.

Bonaparte set out in the spring of 1800, to make the campaign of Italy, which was distinguished by the battle of Marengo.  He went by Geneva, and as he expressed a desire to see M. Necker, my father waited upon him, more with the hope of serving me, than from any other motive.  Bonaparte received him extremely well, and talked to him of his plans of the moment, with that sort of confidence which is in his character, or rather in his calculation; for it is thus we must always style his character.  My father, at first seeing him, experienced nothing of the impression which I did; he felt no restraint in his presence, and found nothing extraordinary in his conversation.  I have endeavoured to account to myself for this difference in our opinions of the same person; and, I believe, that it arose, first, because the simple and unaffected dignity of my father’s manners ensured him the respect of all who conversed with him; and second, because the kind of superiority attached to Bonaparte proceeding more from ability in evil action, than from the elevation of good thoughts, his conversation cannot make us conceive what distinguishes him; he neither could nor would explain his own Machiavelian instinct.  My father uttered not a word to him of his two millions deposited in the public treasury; he did not wish to appear interested but for me, and said to him, among other things, that as the first consul loved to surround himself with illustrious