The author considers how Nicollo Machiavelli’s ideas influenced Cardinal de Retz as the hero and the creator of the Memoirs (published in 1717). The author reveals the discrepancy between the memoir-writer’s proclaimed anti-Machiavellianism and his adoption of the ideas of the treatise Sovereign (1532). This discrepancy manifests itself on the level of the judgments and evaluations of the narrator, figures of speech, concept of the autobiographic hero.