M.de Bourrienne would not have spoken of his private interviews with Napoleon, nor of the alleged confidences entrusted to him, while really Napoleon had no longer received him after the 20th October 1802.

When the Emperor, in 1805, forgetting his faults, named him Minister Plenipotentiary at Hamburg, he granted him the customary audience, but to this favour he did not add the return of his former friendship.

Both before and afterwards he constantly refused to receive him, and he did not correspond with him." (Meneval, ii.

378-79).

And in another passage Meneval says: "Besides, it would be wrong to regard these Memoirs as the work of the man whose name they bear.