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.

I cannot tell whether what followed was a portion of his premeditated
conversation with me, or whether it was the result of the satisfaction he
had derived from ascertaining my perfect conviction of the purity of his