and of which no one can know the misery without having experienced
it.

On the day when the signal of opposition was exhibited in the
tribunate by my friend, I had invited several persons whose society
I was fond of, but all of whom were attached to the new government.
At five o'clock I had received ten notes of apology; the first and
second I bore tolerably well, but as they succeeded each other
rapidly, I began to be alarmed. In vain did I appeal to my
conscience, which advised me to renounce all the pleasures attached
to the favour of Bonaparte: I was blamed by so many honorable
people, that I knew not how to support myself on my own way of
thinking. Bonaparte had as yet done nothing exactly culpable; many
asserted that he preserved France from anarchy: in short, if at that
moment he had signified to me any wish of reconciliation, I should
have been delighted: but a step of that sort he will never take
without exacting a degradation, and, to induce that degradation, he
generally enters into such passions of authority, as terrify into
yielding every thing. I do not wish by that to say that Bonaparte
is not really passionate: what is not calculation in him is hatred,
and hatred generally expresses itself in rage: but calculation is in
him so much the strongest, that he never goes beyond what it is
convenient for him to show, according to circumstances and persons.
One day a friend of mine saw him storming at a commissary of war,
who had not done his duty; scarcely had the poor man retired,
trembling with apprehension, when Bonaparte turned round to one of
his aides-du-camp, and said to him, laughing, I hope I have given
him a fine fright; and yet the moment before, you would have
believed that he was no longer master of himself.