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trip I could just as well have settled down in Paris or Marseilles. But most of the documents concerning the Marquis' long stays in France are in the municipal library of Bouville. Rollebon was the Lord of the Manor of Marmommes. Before the war, you could still find one of his descendants in this little town, an architect named Rollebon-Campouyre', who, at his death in 1912, left an important legacy to the Bouville library: letters of the Marquis, the fragment of a journal, and all sorts of papers. I have not yet gone through it all.
    I am glad to have found these notes. I had not read them for ten years. My handwriting has changed, or so it seems to me; I used to write in a smaller hand. How I loved M. de Rollebon that year! I remember one eveningùa Tuesday evening: I had worked all day in the Mazarine; I had just gathered, from his correspondence, of 1789-90, in what a magisterial way he duped
    1 Editor's Footnote: Germain Berger: Mirabeau-Tonneau et ses amis, page 406, note 2. Champion 1906.
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    Nerciat. It was dark, I was going down the Avenue du Maine and I bought some chestnuts at the corner of the Rue de la Gaite\ Was I happy! I laughed all by myself thinking of the face Nerciat must have made when he came back from Germany. The face of the Marquis is like this ink: it has paled considerably since I have worked over it.
    In the first place, starting from 1801, I understand nothing more about his conduct. It is not the lack of documents: letters, fragments of memoirs, secret reports, police records. On the contrary I have almost too many of them. What is lacking in all this testimony is firmness and consistency. They do not contradict each other, neither do they agree with each other; they do not seem to be about the same person. And yet other historians work from the same sources of information. How do they do it? Am I more scrupulous or less intelligent? In any case, the question leaves me completely cold. In truth, what am I looking for? I don't know. For a long time, Rollebon the man has interested me more than the book to be written. But now, the man . . . the man begins to bore me. It is the book which attracts me. I feel more and more need to writeùin the same proportion as I grow old, you might say.
    Evidently it must be admitted that Rollebon took an active part in the assassination of Paul I, that he then accepted an extremely important espionage mission to the Orient from the Czar and constantly betrayed Alexander to the advantage of Napoleon. At the same time he was able to carry on an active correspondence with the Comte d'Artois and send him unimportant information in order to convince him of his fidelity: none of all that is improbable; Fouche, at the same time, was playing a comedy much more dangerous and complex. Perhaps the Marquis also carried on a rifle-supplying business with the Asiatic principalities for his own profit.
    Well, yes: he could have done all that, but it is not proved: I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination. And I am certain that the characters in a novel
    13would nave a more genuine appearance, or, in any case, would be more agreeable.
    Friday:
    Three o'clock. Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. An odd moment in the afternoon. Today it is intolerable.
    A cold sun whitens the dust on the window-panes. Pale sky clouded with white. The gutters were frozen this morning.
    I ruminate heavily near the gas stove; I know in advance the day is lost. I shall do nothing good, except, perhaps, after nightfall. It is because of the sun; it