A powdered wig apologist for Napoleon ([207]; "the giant enchained at St. Helena") whose embassies he served. The translator offers a very brief sketch of his 80-year life. These Memoirs were his greatest contribution. They are almost "otherworldly".

I should be more impressed by the unity of voice, considering it was composed over such a long and colorful epoch in so many dire places. Traversing Europe and America, he took part in feudal sports, hunted with Louis XVI, camped with Iroquois, lunched with Washington, was an eyewitness to the fall of the Bastille and the loss of most of his peers' heads, fainted from hunger, survived the Terror and Napoleon, entertained lavishly as an ambassador, fought to restore the monarchy, and started the Spanish War of 1823.

He was an eyewitness to the wholesale destruction of French "Nobility" and Clergy by revolutionaries and idiots [they burned religious books and attacked Churches]. And then he saw the restoration of the Church by utterly hypocritical power-mongers and thieves.

A model of courtesy, and very likely gay ([xi; 211 platonic love for Mm Beaumont; "I never looked at a woman without blushing" (!)). Entirely ignorant of the arguments of Voltaire and rectitude of the oppressed. However, he observed timidly, but widely, and seems to record actual events and accurate sequences with his independent views. He did seek, fecklessly, to defend Liberty. [300] I always end up loving the sweet-heart. His inerrant kindness always comes through. ( )