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Ch. IV.]
the Emperor Napoleon.
29

naturally most retentive, thinking it would enable me at any time to recall the minutest incident concerning Napoleon. In this I have deceived myself. My life has been a chequered and a melancholy one, and many of its incidents have been of a nature to absorb the mind and abstract the attention from every thing but the consideration of present misery. This, continued for a length of time, has erased things from my recollection which I thought I never could have forgotten, but of which I now retain nothing but the consciousness that they took place, and the regret that I am unable to record them.

Many of the circumstances I am about to relate, however, I did write down shortly after they occurred, and the others have been kept fresh in my memory by being repeated to friends; so that the reader of my little volume may depend on the absolute truth and fidelity of my narrative, a consideration, indeed, to which I have

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