The next day, in fact, I resumed my duties near the Emperor, and I found him exactly the same as he had been before entering on the campaign; the same placidity was evident on his countenance.  It would have been said that the past was no longer anything to him; and living ever in the future, he already saw victory perched again on our banner, and his enemies humiliated and vanquished.  It is true that the numerous addresses he received, and discourses which were pronounced in his presence by the presidents of the senate and the council of state, were no less flattering than formerly; but it was very evident in his replies that if he pretended to forget this disastrous experience in Russia, he was more deeply concerned about the affair of General Malet than anything else.

   [In the reply of the Emperor to the council of state occurred the
   following remarkable passage, which it may not be amiss to repeat at
   this period as very singular: 

“It is to idealism and that gloomy species of metaphysics which, seeking subtilely for first causes, wishes to place on such foundations the legislation of a people, instead of adapting the laws to their knowledge of the human heart, and to the lessons of history, that it is necessary to attribute all the misfortunes our beautiful France has experienced.  These errors have necessarily led to the rule of the men of blood.  In fact, who has proclaimed the principle of insurrection as a duty?  Who has paid adulation to the nation while claiming for it a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising?  Who has destroyed the sanctity and respect for the laws, in making them depend, not on the sacred principles of justice, or the nature of things and on civil justice, but simply on the will of an assembly of men strangers to the knowledge of civil, criminal, administrative, political, and military law?  When one is called on to regenerate a state, there are directly opposite principles by which one must necessarily be guided.”—­Note by the editor of French edition.

Claude Francois de Malet, born at Dole, 1754.  In 1806 was a general officer, and was dismissed the service.  Plotting against the Emperor, he was imprisoned from 1808 to 1812.  On October 24 he issued a proclamation that the Emperor had died in Russia, and that he (Malet) had been appointed Governor of Paris by the senate.  He made Savary prisoner, and shot General Hullin.  He was made prisoner in turn by General Laborde, and summarily shot.-TRANS. (See “The Memoirs” by Bourrienne for the detail of this plot.  D.W.)]

As for myself I cannot deny the painful feelings I experienced the first time I went out in Paris, and passed through the public promenades during my hours of leisure; for I was struck with the large number of persons in mourning whom I met,—­the wives and sisters of our brave soldiers mowed down on the fields of Russia; but I kept these disagreeable impressions to myself.