—­[Sir Walter appears to have collected his information for the Life of Napoleon only from those libels and vulgar stories which gratified the calumnious spirit and national hatred.  His work is written with excessive negligence, which, added to its numerous errors, shows how much respect he must have entertained for his readers.  It would appear that his object was to make it the inverse of his novels, where everything is borrowed from history.  I have been assured that Marshal Macdonald having offered to introduce Scott to some generals who could have furnished him with the most accurate, information respecting military events, the glory of which they had shared, Sir Walter replied, “I thank you, but I shall collect my information from unprofessional reports.”—­Bourrienne.]—­

Having been appointed Secretary of Legation to Stuttgart, I set off for that place on the 2d of August, and I did not again see my ardent young friend until 1795.  He told me that my departure accelerated his for Corsica.  We separated, as may be supposed, with but faint hopes of ever meeting again.

By a decree of the 28th of March of 1793, all French agents abroad were ordered to return to France, within three months, under pain of being regarded as emigrants.  What I had witnessed before my departure for Stuttgart, the excitement in which I had left the public mind, and the well-known consequences of events of this kind, made me fear that I should be compelled to be either an accomplice or a victim in the disastrous scenes which were passing at home.  My disobedience of the law placed my name on the list of emigrants.

It has been said of me, in a biographical publication, that “it was as remarkable as it was fortunate for Bourrienne that, on his return, he got his name erased from the list of emigrants of the department of the Yonne, on which it had been inscribed during his first journey to Germany.  This circumstance has been interpreted in several different ways, which are not all equally favourable to M. de Bourrienne.”

I do not understand what favourable interpretations can be put upon a statement entirely false.  General Bonaparte repeatedly applied for the erasure of my name, from the month of April 1797, when I rejoined him at Leoben, to the period of the signature of the treaty of Campo-Formio; but without success.  He desired his brother Louis, Berthier, Bernadotte, and others, when he sent them to the Directory, to urge my erasure; but in vain.  He complained of this inattention to his wishes to Bottot, when he came to Passeriano, after the 18th Fructidor.  Bottot, who was secretary to Barras, was astonished that I was not erased, and he made fine promises of what he would do.  On his return to France he wrote to Bonaparte:  “Bourrienne is erased.”  But this was untrue.  I was not erased until November 1797, upon the reiterated solicitations of General Bonaparte.