The title of TEN YEARS' EXILE, is that of which the authoress
herself made choice; I have deemed it proper to retain it, although
the work, being unfinished, comprises only a period of seven years.
The narrative begins in 1800, two years previous to my mother's
first exile, and stops at 1804, after the death of M. Necker. It
recommences in 1810, and breaks off abruptly at her arrival in
Sweden, in the autumn of 1812. Between the first and second part of
these Memoirs there is therefore an interval of nearly six years. An
explanation of this will be found in a faithful statement of the
manner in which they were composed.

I will not anticipate my mother's narrative of the persecution to
which she was subjected during the imperial government: that
persecution, equally mean and cruel, forms the subject of the
present publication, the interest of which I should only weaken. It
will be sufficient for me to remind the reader, that after having
exiled her from Paris, and subsequently sent her out of France,
after having suppressed her work on Germany with the most arbitrary
caprice, and made it impossible for her to publish anything, even on
subjects wholly unconnected with politics; that government went so
far as to make her almost a prisoner in her own residence, to forbid
her all kind of travelling, and to deprive her of the pleasures of
society and the consolations of friendship. It was while she was in
this situation that my mother began her Memoirs, and one may readily
conceive what must have been at that time the disposition of her
mind.

During the composition of the work, the hope of one day giving it to
the world scarcely presented itself in the most distant futurity.
Europe was still bent to that degree under the yoke of Napoleon,