LETTER XL.
PARIS, September, 1805.
My LORD:—Madame de C———n is now one of our most fashionable ladies. Once in the week she has a grand tea-party; once in a fortnight a grand dinner; and once in the month a grand ball. Foreign gentlemen are particularly well received at her house, which, of course, is much frequented by them. As you intend to visit this country after a peace, it may be of some service to you not to be unacquainted with the portrait of a lady whose invitation to see the original you may depend upon the day after your arrival.
Madame de C——n is the widow of the great and useless traveller, Comte de C——n, to whom his relatives pretend that she was never married. Upon his death-bed he acknowledged her, however, for his wife, and left her mistress of a fortune of three hundred thousand livres a year. The first four years of her widowhood she passed in lawsuits before the tribunals, where the plaintiffs could not prove that she was unmarried, nor she herself that she was married. But Madame Napoleon Bonaparte, for a small douceur, speaking in her favour, the consciences of the juries, and the understanding of the judges, were all convinced at once that she had been the lawful wife, and was the lawful heiress, of Comte de C——n, who had no children, or nearer relatives than third cousins.
Comte de C——n was travelling in the East Indies when the Revolution broke out. His occupation there was a very innocent one; he drew countenances, being one of the most enthusiastic sectaries of Lavater, and modestly called himself the first physiognomist in the world. Indeed, he had been at least the most laborious one; for he left behind him a collection of six thousand two hundred portraits, drawn by himself in the four quarters of the world, during a period of thirty years.
He never engaged a servant, nor dealt with a tradesman, whose physiognomy had not been examined by him. In his travels he preferred the worst accommodation in a house where he approved of the countenance of the host, to the best where the traits or lines of the landlord's face were irregular, or did not coincide with his ideas of physiognomical propriety. The cut of a face, its expression, the length of the nose, the width or smallness of the mouth, the form of the eyelids or of the ears, the colour or thickness of the hair, with the shape and tout ensemble of the head, were always minutely considered and discussed before he entered into any agreement, on any subject, with any individual whatever. Whatever recommendations, or whatever attestations were produced, if they did not correspond with his own physiognomical remarks and calculations, they were disregarded; while a person whose physiognomy pleased him required no other introduction to obtain his confidence. Whether he thought himself wiser than his forefathers, he certainly did not grow richer than they were. Charlatans who imposed upon his credulity and impostors who flattered his mania, servants who robbed him and mistresses who deceived him, proved that if his knowledge of physiognomy was great, it was by no means infallible. At his death, of the fortune left him by his parents only the half remained.
His friends often amused themselves at the expense of his foibles. When he prepared for a journey to the East, one of them recommended him a servant, upon whose fidelity he could depend. After examining with minute scrupulosity the head of the person, he wrote: "My friend, I accept your valuable present. From calculations, which never deceive me, Manville (the servant's name) possesses, with the fidelity of a dog, the intrepidity of the lion. Chastity itself is painted on his front, modesty in his looks, temperance on his cheek, and his mouth and nose bespeak honesty itself." Shortly after the Count had landed at Pondicherry, Mauville, who was a girl, died, in a condition which showed that chastity had not been the divinity to whom she had chiefly sacrificed. In her trunk were found several trinkets belonging to her master, which she honestly had appropriated to herself. His miscalculation on this subject the Count could not but avow; he added, however, that it was the entire fault of his friend, who had duped him with regard to the sex.
Madame de C——n was, on account of her physiognomy, purchased by her late husband, then travelling in Turkey, from a merchant of Circassian slaves, when she was under seven years of age, and sent for her education to a relative of the Count, an Abbess of a convent in Languedoc. On his return from Turkey, some years afterwards, he took her under his own care, and she accompanied him all over Asia, and returned first to France in 1796, where her husband's name was upon the list of emigrants, though he had not been in Europe for ten years before the Revolution.
However, by some pecuniary arrangements with Barras, he recovered his property, which he did not long enjoy, for he died in 1798. The suitors of Madame de C——n, mistress of a large fortune, with some remnants of beauty and elegance of manners, have been numerous, and among them several Senators and generals, and even the Minister Chaptal. But she has politely declined all their offers, preferring her liberty and the undisturbed right of following her own inclination to the inconvenient ties of Hymen. A gentleman, whom she calls, and who passes for, her brother, Chevalier de M de T——, a Knight of Malta, assists her in doing the honours of her house, and is considered as her favourite lover; though report and the scandalous chronicle say that she bestows her favours on every person who wishes to bestow on her his name, and that, therefore, her gallants are at least as numerous as her suitors.
Such is the true statement of the past, as well as the present, with regard to Madame de C——n. She relates, however, a different story. She says that she is the daughter of the Marquis de M de T——-, of a Languedoc family; that she sailed, when a child, with her mother in a felucca from Nice to Malta, there to visit her brother; was captured by an Algerine pilot, separated from her mother, and carried to Constantinople by a merchant of slaves; there she was purchased by Comte de C——n, who restored her to her family, and whom, therefore, notwithstanding the difference of their ages, she married from gratitude. This pretty, romantic story is ordered in our Court circles to be officially believed; and, of course, is believed by nobody, not even by the Emperor and Empress themselves, who would not give her the place of a lady-in-waiting, though her request was accompanied with a valuable diamond to the latter. The present was kept, but the offer declined.
All the members of the Bonaparte family, female as well as male, honour her house with their visits and with the acceptance of her invitations; and it is, therefore, among our fashionables, the 'haut ton' to be of the society and circle of Madame de C——n.
Last February, Madame de P——t (the wife of Comte de P——t, a relative, by her husband's side, of Madame de C——n, and who by the Revolution lost all their property, and now live with her as companions) was brought to bed of a son; the child was baptized by the Cardinal de Belloy, and Madame Joseph and Prince Louis Bonaparte stood sponsors. This occurrence was celebrated with great pomp, and a fete was given to nearly one hundred and fifty per sons of both sexes,—as usual, a mixture of ci-devant nobles and of ci-devant sans-culottes; of rank and meanness; of upstart wealth and beggared dignity.
What that day struck me most was the audacity of the Senator Villetard in teasing and insulting the old Cardinal de Belloy with his impertinent conversation and affected piety. This Villetard was, before the Revolution, a journeyman barber, and was released in 1789 by the mob from the prison of the Chatelet, where he was confined for theft. In 1791 his patriotism was so well known in the Department of Yonne, that he was deputed by the Jacobins there to the Jacobins of the capital with an address, encouraging and advising the deposition of Louis XVI.; and in 1792 he was chosen a member of the National Convention, where the most sanguinary and most violent of the factions were always certain to reckon him in the number of their adherents.
In December, 1797, when an insurrection, prepared by Joseph Bonaparte at Rome, deprived the late revered pontiff both of his sovereignty and liberty, Villetard was sent by the Jacobin and atheistical party of the Directory to Loretto, to seize and carry off the celebrated Madonna. In the execution of this commission he displayed a conduct worthy the littleness of his genius and the criminality of his mind. The wooden image of the Holy Virgin, a black gown said to have appertained to her, together with three broken china plates, which the Roman Catholic faithful have for ages believed to have been used by her, were presented by him to the Directory, with a cruelly scandalous show, accompanied by a horribly blasphemous letter. He passed the next night, after he had perpetrated this sacrilege, with two prostitutes, in the chapel of the Holy Virgin; and, on the next morning, placed one of them, naked, on the pedestal where the statue of the Virgin had formerly stood, and ordered all the devotees at Loretto, and two leagues round, to prostrate themselves before her. This shocking command occasioned the premature death of fifteen ladies, two of whom, who were nuns, died on the spot on beholding the horrid outrage; and many more were deprived of their reason. How barbarously unfeeling must that wretch be who, in bereaving the religious, the pious, and the conscientious of their consolation and hope, adds the tormenting reproach of apostasy, by forcing virtue upon its knees to bow before what it knows to be guilt and infamy.
A traitor to his associates as to his God, it was he who, in November, 1799, presented at St. Cloud the decree which excluded all those who opposed Bonaparte's authority from the Council of Five Hundred, and appointed the two committees which made him a First Consul. In reward for this act of treachery, he was nominated to a place in the Conservative Senate. He has now ranked himself among our modern saints, goes regularly to Mass and confesses; has made a brother of his, who was a drummer, an Abbe; and his assiduity about the Cardinal was probably with a view to obtain advancement for this edifying priest.
The Cardinal de Belloy is now ninety-six years of age, being born in 1709, and has been a Bishop for fifty-three years, but, during the Revolution, was proscribed, with all other prelates. He remained, however, in France, where his age saved him from the guillotine, but not from being reduced to the greatest want. A descendant of a noble family, and possessing an unpolluted character, Bonaparte fixed upon him as one of the pillars for the reestablishment of the Catholic worship, made him an Archbishop of Paris, and procured him the rank of a Cardinal from Rome. But he is now in his second childhood, entirely directed by his grand vicaries, Malaret, De Mons, and Legeas, who are in the pay of, and absolutely devoted to, Bonaparte. An innocent instrument in their hands, of those impious compliments pronounced by him to the Emperor and the Empress, he did not, perhaps, even understand the meaning. From such a man the vile and artful Villetard might extort any promise. I observed, however, with pleasure, that he was watched by the grand vicar, Malaret, who seldom loses sight of His Eminence.
These two so opposite characters—I mean De Belloy and Villetard—are already speaking evidences of the composition of the society at Madame de C——n's. But I will tell you something still more striking. This lady is famous for her elegant services of plate, as much as for her delicate taste in entertaining her parties. After the supper on this night, eleven silver and four gold plates, besides numerous silver and gold spoons, forks, etc., were missed. She informed Fouche of her loss, who had her house surrounded by spies, with orders not to let any servant pass without undergoing a strict search. The first gentleman who called for his carriage was His Excellency the Counsellor of State and grand officer of the Legion of Honour, Treilhard. His servants were stopped and the cause explained. They willingly, and against the protest of their master, suffered themselves to be searched. Nothing was found upon them; but the police agents, observing the full-dress hat of their master rather bulky under his arm, took the liberty to look into it, where they found one of Madame de C——n's gold plates and two of her spoons. His Excellency immediately ordered his servants to be arrested, for having concealed their theft there. Fouche, however, when called out, advised his friend to forgive them for misplacing them, as the less said on the subject the better. When Madame de C——n heard of this discovery, she asked Fouche to recall his order or to alter it. "A repetition of such misplacings in the hats or in the pockets of the masters," said she, "would injure the reputation of my house and company." She never recovered the remainder of her loss, and that she might not be exposed in future to the same occurrences, she bought two services of china the following day, to be used when she had mixed society.
Treilhard had, before the Revolution, the reputation of being an honest man and an able advocate; but has since joined the criminals of all factions, being an accomplice in their guilt and a sharer of their spoils. In the convention, he voted for the death of Louis XVI. and pursued without mercy the unfortunate Marie Antoinette to the scaffold. During his missions in the departments, wherever he went the guillotine was erected and blood flowed in streams. He was, nevertheless, accused by Robespierre of moderatism. At Lille, in 1797, and at Rastadt, in 1798, he negotiated as a plenipotentiary with the representatives of Princes, and in 1799 corresponded as a director with Emperors and Kings, to whom he wrote as his great and dear friends. He is now a Counsellor of State, in the section of legislation, and enjoys a fortune of several millions of livres, arising from estates in the country, and from leases in the capital. As this accident at Madame de C——n's soon became public, his friends gave out that he had of late been exceedingly absent, and, from absence of mind, puts everything he can lay hold of into his pocket. He is not a favourite with Madame Bonaparte, and she asked her husband to dismiss and disgrace him for an act so disgraceful to a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, but was answered, "Were I to turn away all the thieves and rogues that encompass me I should soon cease to reign. I despise them, but I must employ them."
It is whispered that the police have discovered another of Madame de C n's lost gold plates at a pawnbroker's, where it had been pledged by the wife of another Counsellor of State, Francois de Nantes.
This I give you merely as a report! though the fact is, that Madame Francois is very fond of gambling, but very unfortunate; and she, with other of our fashionable ladies, has more than once resorted to her charms for the payment of her gambling debts.