THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF COUNT LAVALLETTE. Vol. 1. Translated by
L. Aldersey White
These memoirs (Lovat Dickson, 10s. 6d.), ably translated, give one of the briefest and clearest accounts of the events which began with the Revolution and ended with Waterloo. They are strangely free of the melodramatic spirit which characterised the period. Lavallette was one who believed that " he was doing wrong if, even in con- versation, he abandoned the attitude of reserve." Such a man, though he makes
a reliable aide-de-camp and a Com- missioner of Posts with whom the secrets of a nation's correspondence are safe, is of less value to the historian than a more outspoken chronicler would be. His discretion keeps him from telling just those things which it most con- cerns the historian to know. And Lavallette, who could have told so much, and who had many intimate glimpses of Napoleon, is the soul of discretion and so adds little to our knowledge. One gains the impression that either he cannot or else he will not go, like his master, " to the bottom of things." In one respect he does a grave injustice, when he ascribes the murder of D'Enghien to Napoleon's spirit of vendetta corsica. The translator, while giving an additional motive for the kidnapping—the fact that Napoleon was (wrongly) informed that Dumouriez was plotting with D'Enghien—does not point out, as M. Madelin recently did, that Napoleon was only partially, if at all, responsible for the actual murder. The translator's notes, with this single exception, are admirable. They eluci- date many details hitherto obscure. They trace, with the most exact topo- graphy, the events both in Paris and on the Egyptian expedition and they are a fitting memorial to a distinguished scholar.
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