Part 9 (1/2)

Notwithstanding the care of our Government to conceal and bury this affair in oblivion, it furnished matter both for conversation in our fashi+onable circles, and subjects for our caricaturists But these artists were soon seized by the police, who found it ues 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 assuht 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 e mania behind hiue with a hundred wo even one”

I have been in company with Gravina, and after what I heard hiht hiotry 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 ood manners The hideousness of vice, the pretensions of ambition, the vanity of rank, the pride of favour, and the shaloss 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 advance demands a diamond of such worth on the day of your promotion This tariff of favours and of infa, and the clerk for writing your coer for infor 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 cris, 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 oife; 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 hih the heart, and for another sum of twelve thousand livres he was acquitted, and released before last Christain, on suspicion of having poisoned his own daughter, hom 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 eed 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 erants, Louis took possession of the reeneral areat surprise, they heard that this Louis had, by his ill-treat the hi to the law, the restitution 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 i served in the arent of Louis XVIII To disprove the first part of the charge, he produced certificates froration, 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 ed 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 Do 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 title to the estate by the revolutionary rants should be considered as politically dead Hitherto Baron de Saurac had, froed will; but shocked by his son's obduracy, and being reduced to distress, his counsellor produced this document, which not only went to deprive Louis of his property, but exposed him to a criminal prosecution

This unnatural son, as not yet twenty-five, had imbibed all the revolutionary morals of his contemporaries, and ell acquainted with the moral characters of his revolutionary countrymen He addressed himself, therefore, to Merlin of Douai, Bonaparte's Iion of Honour; who, for a bribe of fifty thousand livres--obtained for himent in his favour, in the tribunal of cassation, under the sophistical conclusion that all e 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 sa in him some application, charitably sent hi bestowed on hienerous 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 assumed 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 asseenerosity He joined the Orleans faction and beca, violent, and cruel persecutors of the privileged classes, particularly of the clergy, to who 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 Prudhoainst 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 Septeed by the san, in June, 1799 Bonaparte expressed, at first, the n contempt for this Merlin, but on account of one of his sons, as his aide-de-caeneral

As nothing paints better the true features of a Government than the morality or vices of its functionaries, I will finish thischaracteristic 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 hich he has been connected It has been his policy to keep in continual fere and all other odious passions; establishi+ng, by such means, his influence on the terror of some, the ambition of others, and the credulity of the 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 criht national property to the amount of fifteen million of livress--and he is supposed to possess money nearly to the saar, and educated by charity, this fortune, together with the liberal salaries he enjoys, uilt, 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, rifleoons and hussars, endarrenadiers, rifleether a not inconsiderable arh 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 arrison 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 ion 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 spacious 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 alularly at Mass, either in the Imperial Chapel or in the parish churches

Bonaparte discourages eneral, but particularly a 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 reater satisfaction, and leaves behind a rand ularly occurred three tio, 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 froi to what is called the first military division of the Ar the brigades that served under Bonaparte in Italy and Egypt with the greatest eclat, and constitute a kind of depot for recruiting his household troops with tried and trusty enerally 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 alill continue their faithful support, unique in its sort and composition, exists in the bosom as well as in the extremities of this country Iainst their will into the field, quartered and taken care of by our Government, and all possessed with the absurd prejudice that, as they have beenthe battles of rebellion, the restoration of legitinty would to them be an epoch of destruction, or at least of misery and want; and this prejudice is kept alive by eht 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 perarrison duty in fortified places not exposed to an attack by enemies, and to assist in the different arsenals and laboratories, foundries, and depots of military or naval stores Others are attached to the police offices, and souilty individuals; or as garnissaires, to enforce the pay 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 as due to the state has been acquitted After their entrance into a house, and during their stay, no furniture or effects whatever can be reo out-of-doors without being accompanied by one of them

In the houses appropriated to our invalids, the inreat care to e halls, billiards, and reading-room to meet in; and the co libraries, from-which they can borrohat books they contain, and read theood and even a huh these libraries chiefly contain military histories or novels