POLITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY 243

because she was endowed with exuberant vitality and steeled
by a vast ambition. Her husband, she confesses in a revealing
phrase, was nothing to her, but not so the throne of Russia.
"L'ambition seule me soutenait. ... En entrant enRussie je
m'etais dit: Je regnerai seule ici." When he left the room
after his insufferable prattle, the dullest book seemed a delight,
Occasionally we read of tears, more often of gaiety, dances
and adventures. " Je ne me suis jamais crue estremement
belle, mais je plaisais." Serge Solrikoff, the first of her score
of lovers, was a welcome diversion. Her husband, recognizing
her intellectual superiority, called her Mme la Ressource.
" Si je ne cornprends pas ies choses rnoi-merne, ma femme
comprend tout." When the impossible Peter III was murdered
soon after his accession, the calculating young widow entered
on the decades of authority to which she had looked forward
so eagerly, holding her own with the leading actors on the
European stage. Her fragmentary memoirs are a valuable
contribution to our knowledge of the atmosphere of the
Russian Court; but their enduring interest is the development
of a masterful being who combined the brain of a philosopher,
the will of a born ruler, and the frailties of an oversexed woman.

Except for the war of 1914-1918, no event in history has
produced so many autobiographies as the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic Empire to which it gave birth. So keen
wras the appetite for this class of literature that a number of
spurious works, such as the memoirs of Fouche, were Sung
on the market. To this period belong the first political
apologias by women, and that of Mme Roland in particular
quivers with passionate life. Yet none of the protagonists in
the most moving drama of modern times has left an autobio-
graphy, for most of them perished by the guillotine before
they reached middle life.

Napoleon, like many lesser actors, had ample leisure to
posture for posterity. He began to dictate reminiscences on
the ship which bore him to exile, and at St. Helena he dictated
to Las Casas, Gourgaud or Montholon for hours at a time.
The letters from the Cape ofGoodHope> published in an English
translation in 1817, were the first attempt to restore contact
with the outer world. Nominally written by an Englishman,
they were in fact dictated by Napoleon, or at any rate composed
under his eye and secretly despatched to London. British
sympathy, he hoped, might be aroused by the story of his
sufferings. The Oeuvres de Napoleon fill volumes 29-3 z of the