that you will clear me from this infamous imputation.  I would not have it accompany my name to posterity.  I trust in you.  You have never given credit to the horrid accusation?”—­“No, General, never.”  Napoleon then entered into a number of details on the previous life of Hortense; on the way in which she conducted herself, and on the turn which her marriage had taken.  “It has not turned out,” he said, “as I wished:  the union has not been a happy one.  I am sorry for it, not only because both are dear to me, but because the circumstance countenances the infamous reports that are current among the idle as to my intimacy with her.”  He concluded the conversation with these words:—­“Bourrienne, I sometimes think of recalling you; but as there is no good pretext for so doing, the world would say that I have need of you, and I wish it to be known that I stand in need of nobody.”  He again said a few words about Hortense.  I answered that it would fully coincide with my conviction of the truth to do what he desired, and that I would do it; but that suppressing the false reports did not depend on me.

Hortense, in fact, while she was Mademoiselle beauharnais, regarded Napoleon with respectful awe.  She trembled when she spoke to him, and never dared to ask him a favour.  When she had anything to solicit she applied to me; and if I experienced any difficulty in obtaining for her what she sought, I mentioned her as the person for whom I pleaded.  “The little simpleton!” Napoleon would say, “why does she not ask me herself:  is the girl afraid of me?” Napoleon never cherished for her any feeling but paternal tenderness.  He loved her after his marriage with her mother as he would have loved his own child.  During three years I was a witness to all their most private actions, and I declare that I never saw or heard anything that could furnish the least ground for suspicion, or that afforded the slightest trace of the existence of a culpable intimacy.  This calumny must be classed among those with which malice delights to blacken the characters of men more brilliant than their fellows, and which are so readily adopted by the light-minded and unreflecting.  I freely declare that did I entertain the smallest doubt with regard to this odious charge, of the existence of which I was well aware before Napoleon spoke to me on the subject, I would candidly avow it.  He is no more:  and let his memory be accompanied only by that, be it good or bad, which really belongs to it.  Let not this reproach be one of those charged against him by the impartial historian.  I must say, in concluding this delicate subject, that the principles of Napoleon on points of this kind were rigid in the utmost degree, and that a connection of the nature of that charged against him was neither in accordance with his morals nor his tastes.