a letter; and as the having assured any one that you are his most
humble servant would not entitle him to ask any thing of you, so if
any one says that he is a lover of liberty,--that he believes in
God,--that he prefers his conscience to his interest, Bonaparte
considers such professions only as an adherence to custom, or as
the regular means of forwarding ambitious views or selfish
calculations. The only class of human beings whom he cannot well
comprehend, are those who are sincerely attached to an opinion,
whatever be the consequences of it: such persons Bonaparte looks
upon as boobies, or as traders who outstand their market, that is to
say, who would sell themselves too dear. Thus, as we shall see in
the sequel, has he never been deceived in his calculations but by
integrity, encountered either in individuals or nations.




CHAPTER 2.

Commencement of opposition in the Tribunate--My first persecution
on that account--Fouche.


Some of the tribunes, who attached a real meaning to the
constitution, were desirous of establishing in their assembly an
opposition analogous to that of England; as if the rights, which
that constitution professed to secure, had anything of reality in
them, and the pretended division of the bodies of the state were
anything more than a mere affair of etiquette, a distinction between
the different anti-chambers of the first consul, in which