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 assertion 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 Assembly, 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 massacres 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 municipality. This new marriage, however, took place before Madame Thuriot had introduced herself to the acquaintance of the Imperial Grenadier Rabais.
LETTER XXX.
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 pass some days with him in the country, and to assist 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 unassuming 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 principal associates 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 compassionate 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 asserted, as facts, atrocities which were either calumnies or merely rumours. When, after Napoleon's assumption 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.