During the Consular Government the object of the Royalist committee was
to seduce rather than to conspire. It was round Madame Bonaparte in
particular that their batteries were raised, and they did not prove
ineffectual. The female friends of Josephine filled her mind with ideas
of the splendour and distinction she would enjoy if the powerful hand
which had chained the Revolution should raise up the subverted throne.
I must confess that I was myself, unconsciously, an accomplice of the
friends of the throne; for what they wished for the interest of the
Bourbons I then ardently wished for the interest of Bonaparte.

While endeavours were thus made to gain over Madame Bonaparte to the
interest of the royal family, brilliant offers were held out for the
purpose of dazzling the First Consul. It was wished to retemper for him
the sword of the constable Duguesclin; and it was hoped that a statue
erected to his honour would at once attest to posterity his spotless
glory and the gratitude of the Bourbons. But when these offers reached
the ears of Bonaparte he treated them with indifference, and placed no
faith in their sincerity. Conversing on the subject one day with M. de
La Fayette he said, "They offer me a statue, but I must look to the
pedestal. They may make it my prison." I did not hear Bonaparte utter
these words; but they were reported to me from a source, the authenticity
of which may be relied on.

About this time, when so much was said in the Royalist circles and in the
Faubourg St. Germain, of which the Hotel de Luynes was the headquarters,
about the possible return of the Bourbons, the publication of a popular
book contributed not a little to direct the attention of the public to
the most brilliant period of the reign of Louis XIV. The book was the
historical romance of Madame de la Valloire, by Madame de Genlis, who had