Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud Part 9

Notwithstanding the care of our Government to conceal and bury this affair in oblivion, it furnished matter both for conversation in our fas.h.i.+onable circles, and subjects for our caricaturists. But these artists were soon seized by the police, who found it more easy to chastise genius than to silence tongues. The declaration of war by Spain against your country was a lucky opportunity for Gravina to quit with honour a Court where he was an object of ridicule, to a.s.sume the command of a fleet which might one day make him an object of terror. When he took leave of Bonaparte, he was told to return to France victorious, or never to return any more; and Talleyrand warned him as a friend, "whenever he returned to his post in France to leave his marriage mania behind him in Spain. Here," said he, "you may, without ridicule, intrigue with a hundred women, but you run a great risk by marrying even one."

I have been in company with Gravina, and after what I heard him say, so far from judging him superst.i.tious, I thought him really impious. But infidelity and bigotry are frequently next-door neighbours.

LETTER XXVIII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--It cannot have escaped the observation of the most superficial traveller of rank, that, at the Court of St. Cloud, want of morals is not atoned for by good breeding or good manners. The hideousness of vice, the pretensions of ambition, the vanity of rank, the pride of favour, and the shame of venality do not wear here that delicate veil, that gloss of virtue, which, in other Courts, lessens the deformity of corruption and the scandal of depravity. Duplicity and hypocrisy are here very common indeed, more so than dissimulation anywhere else; but barefaced knaves and impostors must always make indifferent courtiers. Here the Minister tells you, I must have such a sum for a place; and the chamberlain tells you, Count down so much for my protection. The Princess requires a necklace of such a value for interesting herself for your advancement; and the lady-in-waiting demands a diamond of such worth on the day of your promotion. This tariff of favours and of infamy descends 'ad infinitum'. The secretary for signing, and the clerk for writing your commission; the cas.h.i.+er for delivering it, and the messenger for informing you of it, have all their fixed prices. Have you a lawsuit, the judge announces to you that so much has been offered by your opponent, and so much is expected from you, if you desire to win your cause. When you are the defendant against the Crown, the attorney or solicitor-general lets you know that such a douceur is requisite to procure such an issue. Even in criminal proceedings, not only honour, but life, may be saved by pecuniary sacrifices.

A man of the name of Martin, by profession a stock-jobber, killed, in 1803, his own wife; and for twelve thousand livres--he was acquitted, and recovered his liberty. In November last year, in a quarrel with his own brother, he stabbed him through the heart, and for another sum of twelve thousand livres he was acquitted, and released before last Christmas.

This wretch is now in prison again, on suspicion of having poisoned his own daughter, with whom he had an incestuous intercourse, and he boasts publicly of soon being liberated. Another person, Louis de Saurac, the younger son of Baron de Saurac, who together with his eldest son had emigrated, forged a will in the name of his parent, whom he pretended to be dead, which left him the sole heir of all the disposable property, to the exclusion of two sisters. After the nation had shared its part as heir of all emigrants, Louis took possession of the remainder. In 1802, both his father and brother accepted the general amnesty, and returned to France. To their great surprise, they heard that this Louis had, by his ill-treatment, forced his sisters into servitude, refusing them even the common necessaries of life. After upbraiding him for his want of duty, the father desired, according to the law, the rest.i.tution of the unsold part of his estates. On the day fixed for settling the accounts and entering into his rights, Baron de Saurac was arrested as a conspirator and imprisoned in the Temple. He had been denounced as having served in the army of Conde, and as being a secret agent of Louis XVIII. To disprove the first part of the charge, he produced certificates from America, where he had pa.s.sed the time of his emigration, and even upon the rack he denied the latter. During his arrest, the eldest son discovered that Louis had become the owner of their possessions, by means of the will he had forged in the name of his father; and that it was he who had been unnatural enough to denounce the author of his days. With the wreck of their fortune in St. Domingo, he procured his father's release; who, being acquainted with the perversity of his younger son, addressed himself to the department to be reinstated in his property.

This was opposed by Louis, who defended his t.i.tle to the estate by the revolutionary maxim which had pa.s.sed into a law, enacting that all emigrants should be considered as politically dead. Hitherto Baron de Saurac had, from affection, declined to mention the forged will; but shocked by his son's obduracy, and being reduced to distress, his counsellor produced this doc.u.ment, which not only went to deprive Louis of his property, but exposed him to a criminal prosecution.

This unnatural son, who was not yet twenty-five, had imbibed all the revolutionary morals of his contemporaries, and was well acquainted with the moral characters of his revolutionary countrymen. He addressed himself, therefore, to Merlin of Douai, Bonaparte's Imperial attorney-general and commander of his Legion of Honour; who, for a bribe of fifty thousand livres--obtained for him, after he had been defeated in every other court, a judgment in his favour, in the tribunal of ca.s.sation, under the sophistical conclusion that all emigrants, being, according to law, considered as politically dead, a will in the name of any one of them was merely a pious fraud to preserve the property in the family.

This Merlin is the son of a labourer of Anchin, and was a servant of the Abbey of the same name. One of the monks, observing in him some application, charitably sent him to be educated at Douai, after having bestowed on him some previous education. Not satisfied with this generous act, he engaged the other monks, as well as the chapter of Cambray, to subscribe for his expenses of admission as an attorney by the Parliament of Douai, in which situation the Revolution found him. By his dissimulation and a.s.sumed modesty, he continued to dupe his benefactors; who, by their influence, obtained for him the nomination as representative of the people to our First National a.s.sembly. They soon, however, had reason to repent of their generosity. He joined the Orleans faction and became one of the most persevering, violent, and cruel persecutors of the privileged cla.s.ses, particularly of the clergy, to whom he was indebted for everything. In 1792 he was elected a member of the National Convention, where he voted for the death of his King. It was he who proposed a law (justly called, by Prudhomme, the production of the deliberate homicide Merlin) against suspected persons; which was decreed on the 17th of September, 1793, and caused the imprisonment or proscription of two hundred thousand families. This decree procured him the appellation of Merlin Suspects and of Merlin Potence. In 1795 he was appointed a Minister of Police, and soon afterwards a Minister of Justice. After the revolution in favour of the Jacobins of the 4th of September, 1797, he was made a director, a place which he was obliged by the same Jacobins to resign, in June, 1799. Bonaparte expressed, at first, the most sovereign contempt for this Merlin, but on account of one of his sons, who was his aide-de-camp, he was appointed by him, when First Consul, his attorney-general.

As nothing paints better the true features of a Government than the morality or vices of its functionaries, I will finish this man's portrait with the following characteristic touches.

Merlin de Douai has been successively the counsel of the late Duc d'

Orleans, the friend of Danton, of Chabot, and of Hebert, the admirer of Murat, and the servant of Robespierre. An accomplice of Rewbell, Barras, and la Reveilliere, an author of the law of suspected persons, an advocate of the Septembrizers, and an ardent apostle of the St.

Guillotine. Cunning as a fog and ferocious as a tiger, he has outlived all the factions with which he has been connected. It has been his policy to keep in continual fermentation rivals.h.i.+ps, jealousies, inquietudes, revenge and all other odious pa.s.sions; establis.h.i.+ng, by such means, his influence on the terror of some, the ambition of others, and the credulity of them all. Had I, when Merlin proposed his law concerning suspected persons, in the name of liberty and equality, been free and his equal, I should have said to him, "Monster, this, your atrocious law, is your sentence of death; it has brought thousands of innocent persons to an untimely end; you shall die by my hands as a victim, if the tribunals do not condemn you to the scaffold as an executioner or as a criminal."

Merlin has bought national property to the amount of fifteen million of livress--and he is supposed to possess money nearly to the same amount, in your or our funds. For a man born a beggar, and educated by charity, this fortune, together with the liberal salaries he enjoys, might seem sufficient without selling justice, protecting guilt, and oppressing or persecuting innocence.

LETTER XXIX.

Paris, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--The household troops of Napoleon the First are by thousands more numerous than those even of Louis XIV. were. Grenadiers on foot and on horseback, riflemen on foot and on horseback, heavy and light artillery, dragoons and hussars, mamelukes and sailors, artificers and pontoneers, gendarmes, gendarmes d'Alite, Velites and veterans, with Italian grenadiers, riflemen, dragoons, etc., etc., compose all together a not inconsiderable army.

Though it frequently happens that the pay of the other troops is in arrears, those appertaining to Bonaparte's household are as regularly paid as his Senators, Counsellors of State, and other public functionaries. All the men are picked, and all the officers as much as possible of birth, or at least of education. In the midst of this voluptuous and seductive capital, they are kept very strict, and the least negligence or infraction of military discipline is more severely punished than if committed in garrison or in an encampment. They are both better clothed, accoutred, and paid, than the troops of the line, and have everywhere the precedency of them. All the officers, and many of the soldiers, are members of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, and carry arms of honour distributed to them by Imperial favour, or for military exploits. None of them are quartered upon the citizens; each corps has its own s.p.a.cious barracks, hospitals, drilling-ground, riding or fencing-houses, gardens, bathing-houses, billiard-table, and even libraries. A chapel has lately been constructed near each barrack, and almoners are already appointed. In the meantime, they attend regularly at Ma.s.s, either in the Imperial Chapel or in the parish churches.

Bonaparte discourages much all marriages among the military in general, but particularly among those of his household troops. That they may not, however, be entirely deprived of the society of women, he allows five to each company, with the same salaries as the men, under the name of washerwomen.

With a vain and fickle people, fond of shows and innovations, nothing in a military despotism has a greater political utility, gives greater satisfaction, and leaves behind a more useful terror and awe, than Bonaparte's grand military reviews. In the beginning of his consulate, they regularly occurred three times in the month; after his victory of Marengo, they were reduced to once in a fortnight, and since he has been proclaimed Emperor, to once only in the month. This ostentatious exhibition of usurped power is always closed with a diplomatic review of the representatives of lawful Princes, who introduce on those occasions their fellow-subjects to another subject, who successfully has seized, and continues to usurp, the authority of his own Sovereign. What an example for ambition! what a lesson to treachery!

Besides the household troops, this capital and its vicinity have, for these three years past, never contained less than from fifteen to twenty thousand men of the regiments of the line, belonging to what is called the first military division of the Army of the Interior. These troops are selected from among the brigades that served under Bonaparte in Italy and Egypt with the greatest eclat, and const.i.tute a kind of depot for recruiting his household troops with tried and trusty men. They are also regularly paid, and generally better accoutred than their comrades encamped on the coast, or quartered in Italy or Holland.

But a standing army, upon which all revolutionary rulers can depend, and that always will continue their faithful support, unique in its sort and composition, exists in the bosom as well as in the extremities of this country. I mean, one hundred and twenty thousand invalids, mostly young men under thirty, forced by conscription against their will into the field, quartered and taken care of by our Government, and all possessed with the absurd prejudice that, as they have been maimed in fighting the battles of rebellion, the restoration of legitimate sovereignty would to them be an epoch of destruction, or at least of misery and want; and this prejudice is kept alive by emissaries employed on purpose to mislead them. Of these, eight thousand are lodged and provided for in this city; ten thousand at Versailles, and the remainder in Piedmont, Brabant, and in the conquered departments on the left bank of the Abine; countries where the inhabitants are discontented and disaffected, and require, therefore, to be watched, and to have a better spirit infused.

Those whose wounds permit it are also employed to do garrison duty in fortified places not exposed to an attack by enemies, and to a.s.sist in the different a.r.s.enals and laboratories, foundries, and depots of military or naval stores. Others are attached to the police offices, and some as gendarmes, to arrest suspected or guilty individuals; or as garnissaires, to enforce the payment of contributions from the unwilling or distressed. When the period for the payment of taxes is expired, two of these janissaires present themselves at the house of the persons in arrears, with a billet signed by the director of the contributions and countersigned by the police commissary. If the money is not immediately paid, with half a crown to each of them besides, they remain quartered in the house, where they are to be boarded and to receive half a crown a day each until an order from those who sent them informs them that what was due to the state has been acquitted. After their entrance into a house, and during their stay, no furniture or effects whatever can be removed or disposed of, nor can the master or mistress go out-of-doors without being accompanied by one of them.

In the houses appropriated to our invalids, the inmates are very well treated, and Government takes great care to make them satisfied with their lot. The officers have large halls, billiards, and reading-room to meet in; and the common men are admitted into apartments adjoining libraries, from-which they can borrow what books they contain, and read them at leisure. This is certainly a very good and even a humane inst.i.tution, though these libraries chiefly contain military histories or novels.

As to the morals of these young invalids, they may be well conceived when you remember the morality of our Revolution; and that they, without any religious notions or restraints, were not only permitted, but encouraged to partake of the debauchery and licentiousness which were carried to such an extreme in our armies and encampments. In an age when the pa.s.sions are strongest, and often blind reason and silence conscience, they have not the means nor the permission to marry; in their vicinity it is, therefore, more difficult to discover one honest woman or a dutiful wife, than hundreds of harlots and of adulteresses. Notwithstanding that many of them have been accused before the tribunals of seductions, rape, and violence against the s.e.x, not one has been punished for what the morality of our Government consider merely as bagatelles. Even in cases where husbands, brothers, and lovers have been killed by them while defending or avenging the honour of their wives, sisters, and mistresses, our tribunals have been ordered by our grand judge, according to the commands of the Emperor, not to proceed. As most of them have no occupation, the vice of idleness augments the ma.s.s of their corruption; for men of their principles, when they have nothing to do, never do anything good.

I do not know if my countrywomen feel themselves honoured by or obliged to Bonaparte, for leaving their virtue and honour unprotected, except by their own prudence and strength; but of this I am certain, that all our other troops, as well as the invalids, may live on free quarters with the s.e.x without fearing the consequences; provided they keep at a distance from the females of our Imperial Family, and of those of our grand officers of State and princ.i.p.al functionaries. The wives and the daughters of the latter have, however, sometimes declined the advantage of these exclusive privileges.

A horse grenadier of Bonaparte's Imperial Guard, of the name of Rabais, notorious for his amours and debauchery, was accused before the Imperial Judge Thuriot, at one and the same time by several husbands and fathers, of having seduced the affections of their wives and of their daughters.

As usual, Thuriot refused to listen to their complaints; at the same time insultingly advising them to retake their wives and children, and for the future to be more careful of them. Triumphing, as it were, in his injustice, he inconsiderately mentioned the circ.u.mstance to his own wife, observing that he never knew so many charges of the same sort exhibited against one man.

Madame Thuriot, who had been a servant-maid to her husband before he made her his wife, instead of being disgusted at the recital, secretly determined to see this Rabais. An intrigue was then begun, and carried on for four months, if not with discretion, at least without discovery; but the lady's own imprudence at last betrayed her, or I should say, rather, her jealousy. But for this she might still have been admired among our modest women, and Thuriot among fortunate husbands and happy fathers; for the lady, for the first time since her marriage, proved, to the great joy and pride of her husband, in the family way. Suspecting, however, the fidelity of her paramour, she watched his motions so closely that she discovered an intrigue between him and the chaste spouse of a rich banker; but the consequence of this discovery was the detection of her own crime.

On the discovery of this disgrace, Thuriot obtained an audience of Bonaparte, in which he exposed his misfortune, and demanded punishment on his wife's gallant. As, however, he also acknowledged that his own indiscretion was an indirect cause of their connection, he received the same advice which he had given to other unfortunate husbands: to retake, and for the future guard better, his dear moiety.

Thuriot had, however, an early opportunity of wreaking his vengeance on this gallant Rabais. It seems his prowess had reached the ears of Madame Baciocchi, the eldest sister of Bonaparte. This lady has a children mania, which is very troublesome to her husband, disagreeable to her relations, and injurious to herself. She never beholds any lady, particularly any of her family, in the way which women wish to be who love their lords, but she is absolutely frantic. Now, Thuriot's worthy friend Fouche had discovered, by his spies, that Rabais paid frequent and secret visits to the hotel Baciocchi, and that Madame Baciocchi was the object of these visits. Thuriot, on this discovery, instantly denounced him to Bonaparte.

Had Rabais ruined all the women of this capital, he would not only have been forgiven, but applauded by Napoleon, and his counsellors and courtiers; but to dare to approach, or only to cast his eyes on one of our Imperial Highnesses, was a crime nothing could extenuate or avenge, but the most exemplary punishment. He was therefore arrested, sent to the Temple, and has never since been heard of; so that his female friends are still in the cruel uncertainty whether he has died on the rack, been buried alive in the oubliettes, or is wandering an exile in the wilds of Cayenne.

In examining his trunk, among the curious effects discovered by the police were eighteen portraits and one hundred billets-doux, with medallions, rings, bracelets, tresses of hair, etc., as numerous. Two of the portraits occasioned much scandal, and more gossiping. They were those of two of our most devout and most respectable Court ladies, Maids of Honour to our Empress, Madame Ney and Madame Lasnes; who never miss an opportunity of going to church, who have received the private blessing of the Pope, and who regularly confess to some Bishop or other once in a fortnight. Madame Napoleon cleared them, however, of all suspicion, by declaring publicly in her drawing-room that these portraits had come into the possession of Rabais by the infidelity of their maids; who had confessed their faults, and, therefore, had been charitably pardoned.

Whether the opinions of Generals Ney and Lasnes coincide with Madame Napoleon's a.s.sertion is uncertain; but Lasnes has been often heard to say that, from the instant his wife began to confess, he was convinced she was inclined to dishonour him; so that nothing surprised him.

One of the medallions in Rabais's collection contained on one side the portrait of Thuriot, and on the other that of his wife; both set with diamonds, and presented to her by him on their last wedding day. For the supposed theft of this medallion, two of Thuriot's servants were in prison, when the arrest of Rabais explained the manner in which it had been lost. This so enraged him that he beat and kicked his wife so heartily that for some time even her life was in danger, and Thuriot lost all hopes of being a father.

Before the Revolution, Thuriot had been, for fraud and forgery, struck off the roll as an advocate, and therefore joined it as a patriot. In 1791, he was chosen a deputy to the National a.s.sembly, and in 1792 to the National Convention. He always showed himself one of the most ungenerous enemies of the clergy, of monarchy, and of his King, for whose death he voted. On the 25th of May, 1792, in declaiming against Christianity and priesthood, he wished them both, for the welfare of mankind, at the bottom of the sea; and on the 18th of December the same year, he declared in the Jacobin Club that, if the National Convention evinced any signs of clemency towards Louis XVI., he would go himself to the Temple and blow out the brains of this unfortunate King. He defended in the tribune the ma.s.sacres of the prisoners, affirming that the tree of liberty could never flourish without being inundated with the blood of aristocrats and other enemies of the Revolution. He has been convicted by rival factions of the most shameful robberies, and his infamy and depravity were so notorious that neither Murat, Brissot, Robespierre, nor the Directory would or could employ him. After the Revolution of the 9th of November, 1799, Bonaparte gave him the office of judge of the criminal tribunal, and in 1804 made him a Commander of his Legion of Honour. He is now one of our Emperor's most faithful subjects and most sincere Christians. Such is now his tender conscientiousness, that he was among those who were the first to be married again by some Cardinal to their present wives, to whom they had formerly been united only by the munic.i.p.ality. This new marriage, however, took place before Madame Thuriot had introduced herself to the acquaintance of the Imperial Grenadier Rabais.

LETTER x.x.x.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Regarding me as a connoisseur, though I have no pretensions but that of being an amateur, Lucien Bonaparte, shortly before his disgrace, invited me to pa.s.s some days with him in the country, and to a.s.sist him in arranging his very valuable collection of pictures--next our public ones, the most curious and most valuable in Europe, and, of course, in the world. I found here, as at Joseph Bonaparte's, the same splendour, the same etiquette, and the same liberty, which latter was much enhanced by the really engaging and una.s.suming manners and conversation of the host. At Joseph's, even in the midst of abundance and of liberty, in seeing the person or meditating on the character of the host, you feel both your inferiority of fortune and the humiliation of dependence, and that you visit a master instead of a friend, who indirectly tells you, "Eat, drink, and rejoice as long and as much as you like; but remember that if you are happy, it is to my generosity you are indebted, and if unhappy, that I do not care a pin about you." With Lucien it is the very reverse. His conduct seems to indicate that by your company you confer an obligation on him, and he is studious to remove, on all occasions, that distance which fortune has placed between him and his guests; and as he cannot compliment them upon being wealthier than himself, he seizes with delicacy every opportunity to chew that he acknowledges their superiority in talents and in genius as more than an equivalent for the absence of riches.

He is, nevertheless, himself a young man of uncommon parts, and, as far as I could judge from my short intercourse with the reserved Joseph and with the haughty Napoleon, he is abler and better informed than either, and much more open and sincere. His manners are also more elegant, and his language more polished, which is the more creditable to him when it is remembered how much his education has been neglected, how vitiated the Revolution made him, and that but lately his princ.i.p.al a.s.sociates were, like himself, from among the vilest and most vulgar of the rabble. It is not necessary to be a keen observer to remark in Napoleon the upstart soldier, and in Joseph the former low member of the law; but I defy the most refined courtier to see in Lucien anything indicating a ci-devant sans-culotte. He has, besides, other qualities (and those more estimable) which will place him much above his elder brothers in the opinion of posterity. He is extremely compa.s.sionate and liberal to the truly distressed, serviceable to those whom he knows are not his friends, and forgiving and obliging even to those who have proved and avowed themselves his enemies. These are virtues commonly very scarce, and hitherto never displayed by any other member of the Bonaparte family.

An acquaintance of yours, and--a friend of mine, Count de T-----, at his return here from emigration, found, of his whole former fortune, producing once eighty thousand livres--in the year, only four farms unsold, and these were advertised for sale. A man who had once been his servant, but was then a groom to Lucien, offered to present a memorial for him to his master, to prevent the disposal of the only support which remained to subsist himself, with a wife and four children. Lucien asked Napoleon to prohibit the sale, and to restore the Count the farms, and obtained his consent; but Fouche, whose cousin wanted them, having purchased other national property in the neighbourhood, prevailed upon Napoleon to forget his promise, and the farms were sold. As soon as Lucien heard of it he sent for the Count, delivered into his hands an annuity of six thousand livres--for the life of himself, his wife, and his children, as an indemnity for the inefficacy of his endeavours to serve him, as he expressed himself. Had the Count recovered the farms, they would not have given him a clear profit of half the amount, all taxes paid.

A young author of the name of Gauvan, irritated by the loss of parents and fortune by the Revolution, attacked, during 1799, in the public prints, as well as in pamphlets, every Revolutionist who had obtained notoriety or popularity. He was particularly vehement against Lucien, and laid before the public all his crimes and all his errors, and a.s.serted, as facts, atrocities which were either calumnies or merely rumours. When, after Napoleon's a.s.sumption of the Consulate, Lucien was appointed a Minister of the Interior, he sent for Gauvan, and said to him, "Great misfortunes have early made you wretched and unjust, and you have frequently revenged yourself on those who could not prevent them, among whom I am one. You do not want capacity, nor, I believe, probity.

Here is a commission which makes you a Director of Contributions in the Departments of the Rhine and Moselle, an office with a salary of twelve thousand livres but producing double that sum. If you meet with any difficulties, write to me; I am your friend. Take those one hundred louis d'or for the expenses of your journey. Adieu!" This anecdote I have read in Gauvan's own handwriting, in a letter to his sister. He died in 1802; but Mademoiselle Gauvan, who is not yet fifteen, has a pension of three thousand livres a year--from Lucien, who, has never seen her.

Lucien Bonaparte has another good quality: he is consistent in his political principles. Either from conviction or delusion he is still a Republican, and does not conceal that, had he suspected Napoleon of any intent to reestablish monarchy, much less tyranny, he would have joined those deputies who, on the 9th of November, 1799, in the sitting at St.

Cloud, demanded a decree of outlawry against him. If the present quarrel between these two brothers were sifted to the bottom, perhaps it would be found to originate more from Lucien's Republicanism than from his marriage.

I know, with all France and Europe, that Lucien's youth has been very culpable; that he has committed many indiscretions, much injustice, many imprudences, many errors, and, I fear, even some crimes. I know that he has been the most profligate among the profligate, the most debauched among libertines, the most merciless among the plunderers, and the most perverse among rebels. I know that he is accused of being a Septembrizer; of having murdered one wife and poisoned another; of having been a spy, a denouncer, a persecutor of innocent persons in the Reign of Terror. I know that he is accused of having fought his brothers-in-law; of having ill-used his mother, and of an incestuous commerce with his own sisters.

I have read and heard of these and other enormous accusations, and far be it from me to defend, extenuate, or even deny them. But suppose all this infamy to be real, to be proved, to be authenticated, which it never has been, and, to its whole extent, I am persuaded, never can be--what are the cruel and depraved acts of which Lucien has been accused to the enormities and barbarities of which Napoleon is convicted? Is the poisoning a wife more criminal than the poisoning a whole hospital of wounded soldiers; or the a.s.sisting to kill some confined persons, suspected of being enemies, more atrocious than the ma.s.sacre in cold blood of thousands of disarmed prisoners? Is incest with a sister more shocking to humanity than the well-known unnatural pathic but I will not continue the disgusting comparison. As long as Napoleon is unable to acquit himself of such barbarities and monstrous crimes, he has no right to p.r.o.nounce Lucien unworthy to be called his brother; nor have Frenchmen, as long as they obey the former as a Sovereign, or the Continent, as long as it salutes him as such, any reason to despise the latter for crimes which lose their enormity when compared to the horrid perpetrations of his Imperial brother.

An elderly lady, a relation of Lucien's wife, and a person in whose veracity and morality I have the greatest confidence, and for whom he always had evinced more regard than even for his own mother, has repeated to me many of their conversations. She a.s.sures me that Lucien deplores frequently the want of a good and religious education, and the tempting examples of perversity he met with almost at his entrance upon the revolutionary scene. He says that he determined to get rich 'per fas aut nefas', because he observed that money was everything, and that most persons plotted and laboured for power merely to be enabled to gather treasure, though, after they had obtained both, much above their desert and expectation, instead of being satiated or even satisfied, they bustled and intrigued for more, until success made them unguarded and prosperity indiscreet, and they became with their wealth the easy prey of rival factions. Such was the case of Danton, of Fabre d'Eglantine, of Chabot, of Chaumette, of Stebert, and other contemptible wretches, butchered by Robespierre and his partisans--victims in their turn to men as unjust and sanguinary as themselves. He had, therefore, laid out a different plan of conduct for himself. He had fixed upon fifty millions of livres--as the maximum he should wish for, and when that sum was in his possession, he resolved to resign all pretensions to rank and employment, and to enjoy 'otium c.u.m dignitate'. He had kept to his determination, and so regulated his income that; with the expenses, pomp, and retinue of a Prince, he is enabled to make more persons happy and comfortable than his extortions have ruined or even embarra.s.sed. He now lives like a philosopher, and endeavours to forget the past, to delight in the present, and to be indifferent about futurity. He chose, therefore, for a wife, a lady whom he loved and esteemed, in preference to one whose birth would have been a continual reproach to the meanness of his own origin.

You must, with me, admire the modesty of a citizen sans-culotte, who, without a s.h.i.+lling in the world, fixes upon fifty millions as a reward for his revolutionary achievements, and with which he would be satisfied to sit down and begin his singular course of singular philosophy. But his success is more extraordinary that his pretensions were extravagant.