But in the works edited by Montholon and Las Cases, where the political aim constantly obtrudes itself, the emperor is made again and again to embroider on the theme that he had always been the true champion of ordered freedom.
A charming style, a vivid fancy, exhaustive research, were not to be expected from a hard-worked barrister; but he must certainly be held responsible for the frequent plagiarisms, the still more frequent inaccuracies of detail, the colossal vanity which obtrudes on almost every page,'the hasty insinuations against the memory of the great departed who were to him as giants, and the petty sneers which he condescends to print against his own contemporaries, with whom he was living from day to day on terms of apparently sincere friendship.
It obtrudes itself in fine art, behaviour, law-making, lore and religion.