Abstract
After 1815, French Society found itself urgently needing to conduct its own inventory. Everyone had to know who the new statesmen were, and further, they had to understand the changing social relationships. This explains the blossoming of the contemporary biography, from the Restauration onwards (the denunciation of the "girouettes"), continued during the July Monarchy (publicity becoming sacred), and especially during the Second Empire (the Universal Exposition cult). With important people of the time taking on star-like status, an ideologically reassuring presentation of society was achieved, because the biographers introduced themselves (either implicitly or explicitly) as judges who were a step ahead of posterity 's verdict, keeping their readers within a double illusion of immediacy. One illusion was to be the equals of contemporary celebrities, and the other to live in an historicity already there. Instrument of the modernity, the contemporary biography transforms the present into a forthcoming great age.
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