—­[Lauriston, one of Napoleon’s aides de camp, who was with him at the Military School of Paris, and who had been commissioned in the artillery at the same time as Napoleon, considered that he should have had the post of Grand Ecuyer which Caulaincourt had obtained.  He had complained angrily to the Emperor, and after a stormy interview was ordered to join the fleet of Villeneuve—­In consequence he was at Trafalgar.  On his return after Austerlitz his temporary disgrace was forgotten, and he was sent as governor to Venice.  He became marshal under the Restoration.]—­

I recollect another somewhat curious circumstance respecting the visit of Lauriston, who had left the Emperor and Empress at Aix-la-Chapelle.  Lauriston was the best educated of the aides de camp, and Napoleon often conversed with him on such literary works as he chose to notice.  “He sent for me one day,” said Lauriston, “when I was on duty at the Palace of Lacken, and spoke to me of the decennial prizes, and the tragedy of ‘Carion de Nisas’, and a novel by Madame de Stael, which he had just read, but which I had not seen, and was therefore rather embarrassed in replying to him.  Respecting Madame de Stael and her Delphine, he said some remarkable things.  ‘I do not like women,’ he observed, ’who make men of themselves, any more than I like effeminate men.  There is s proper part for every one to play in the world.  What does all this flight of imagination mean?  What is the result of it?  Nothing.  It is all sentimental metaphysics and disorder of the mind.  I cannot endure that woman; for one reason, that I cannot bear women who make a set at me, and God knows how often she has tried to cajole me!’”

The words of Lauriston brought to my recollection the conversations I had often had with Bonaparte respecting Madame de Stael, of whose advances made to the First Consul, and even to the General of the Army of Italy, I had frequently been witness.  Bonaparte knew nothing at first of Madame de Stael but that she was the daughter of M. Necker, a man for whom, as I have already shown, he had very little esteem.  Madame de Stael had not been introduced to him, and knew nothing more of him than what fame had published respecting the young conqueror of Italy, when she addressed to him letters full of enthusiasm.  Bonaparte read some passages of them to me, and, laughing, said, “What do you think, Bourrienne, of these extravagances.  This woman is mad.”  I recollect that in one of her letters Madame de Stael, among other things, told him that they certainly were created for each other—­that it was in consequence of an error in human institutions that the quiet and gentle Josephine was united to his fate—­that nature seemed to have destined for the adoration of a hero such as he, a soul of fire like her own.  These extravagances disgusted Bonaparte to a degree which I cannot describe.  When he had finished reading these fine epistles he used to throw them into the fire, or tear them with marked ill-humour, and would say, “Well, here is a woman who pretends to genius—­a maker of sentiments, and she presumes to compare herself to Josephine!  Bourrienne, I shall not reply to such letters.”