“No one is further than myself,” replied La Fayette, “from seeking a foreign ambassador to censure what is passing in my own country; but if he ask me if this is liberty, I must answer No.”
“I must say to you, General La Fayette,” said Bonaparte,—“and I perceive it with pain,—that, by your manner of speaking of the acts of the government, you give its enemies the weight of your name.”
“What more can I do?” was the fearless reply. “I live in the country in retirement; I avoid, as far as I can, occasions of speaking of public affairs; but when any one demands of me if your administration of the government is conformable to my ideas of liberty, I shall say that it is not. I wish to be prudent, but I cannot be false.”
“But are you not convinced,” replied he, “that in the state in which I found France I was forced to irregular measures?”
“That is not the question,” he answered. “I speak neither of the time, nor of this or that act; it is the tendency—yes, General, it is the tendency of affairs—which pains me and disturbs me.”
“As to the rest,” Napoleon then replied, “I have spoken to you as the chief of the government; and in that capacity I complain of you. But as a private individual I ought to be content, because, in all which has been told me concerning you, I have perceived that in spite of your severity upon the acts of government, there has always been on your part personal good will for me.”
“You are right,” he answered. “A free government with you at its head—I should have nothing more to desire.”
One day La Fayette dined at the house of Madame de Staël, with Joseph Bonaparte and some members of that ephemeral opposition, whom Napoleon had not expelled.
“You are dissatisfied,” Joseph said to him, in the midst of the conversation. “You are not with us; but permit me to say to you that you are no more with these gentlemen. They desire a rotation of directors who differ in their striking of the shoulder. To-day it is one man; to-morrow it will be another; in place of that, if we have a régime conformed to your principles, you would be pleased that my brother should remain chief.”
When La Fayette was asked to vote for the decree declaring Napoleon First Consul for life, he replied:—