Some of the emigrants, whose strength of body age has not impaired, or whose vigour of mind misfortunes have not depressed, are now serving as officers or soldiers under the Emperor of the French, after having for years fought in vain for the cause of a King of France in the brave army of Conde. Several are even doing duty in Bonaparte's household troops, where I know one who is a captain, and who, for distinguishing himself in combating the republicans, received the Order of St. Louis, but is now made a knight of Napoleon's Republican Order, the Legion of Honour, for bowing gracefully to Her Imperial Majesty the Empress. As he is a man of real honour, this favour is not quite in its place; but I am convinced that should one day an opportunity present itself, he will not miss it, but prove that he has never been misplaced. Another emigrant who, after being a page to the Duc d'Angouleme, made four campaigns as an officer of the Uhlans in the service of the Emperor of Germany, and was rewarded with the Military Order of Maria Theresa, is now a knight of the Legion of Honour, and an officer of the Mamelukes of the Emperor of the French. Four more emigrants have engaged themselves in the same corps as common Mamelukes, after being for seven years volunteers in the legion of Mirabeau, under the Prince de Conde. It were to be wished that the whole of this favourite corps were composed of returned emigrants. I am sure they would never betray the confidence of Napoleon, but they would also never swear allegiance to another Bonaparte.
While the humbled remnants of one sex of the ci-devant privileged classes are thus or worse employed, many persons of the other sex have preferred domestic servitude to courtly splendour, and are chambermaids or governesses, when they might have been Maids of Honour or ladies-in-waiting. Mademoiselle de R———, daughter of Marquis de R———, was offered a place as a Maid of Honour to Princesse Murat, which she declined, but accepted at the same time the offer of being a companion of the rich Madame Moulin, whose husband is a ci-devant valet of Comte de Brienne. Her father and brother suffered for this choice and preference, which highly offended Bonaparte, who ordered them both to be transported to Guadeloupe, under pretence that the latter had said in a coffee-house that his sister would rather have been the housemaid of the wife of a ci-devant valet, than the friend of the wife of a ci-devant assassin and Septembrizer. It was only by a valuable present to Madame Bonaparte from Madame Moulin, that Mademoiselle de B——- was not included in the act of proscription against her father and brother.
I am sorry to say that returned emigrants have also been arrested for frauds and debts, and even tried and convicted of crimes. But they are proportionally few, compared with those who, without support, and perhaps without hope, and from want of resignation and submission to the will of Providence, have, in despair, had recourse to the pistol or dagger, or in the River Seine buried their remembrance both of what they have been and of what they were. The suicides of the vicious capital are reckoned upon an average to amount to one hundred in the month; and for these last three years, one-tenth, at least, have been emigrants of both sexes!
LETTER VI.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:—Nobody here, except his courtiers, denies that Bonaparte is vain, cruel, and ambitious; but as to his private, personal, or domestic vices, opinions are various, and even opposite. Most persons, who have long known him, assert that women are his aversion; and many anecdotes have been told of his unnatural and horrid propensities. On the other hand, his seeming attachment to his wife is contradictory to these rumours, which certainly are exaggerated. It is true, indeed, that it was to oblige Barras, and to obtain her fortune, that he accepted of her hand ten years ago; though insinuating, she was far from being handsome, and had long passed the period of inspiring love by her charms. Her husband's conduct towards her may, therefore, be construed, perhaps, into a proof of indifference towards the whole sex as much as into an evidence of his affection towards her. As he knew who she was when he received her from the chaste arms of Barras, and is not unacquainted with her subsequent intrigues particularly during his stay in Egypt—policy may influence a behaviour which has some resemblance to esteem. He may choose to live with her, but it is impossible he can love her.
A lady, very intimate with Princesse Louis Bonaparte, has assured me that, had it not been for Napoleon's singular inclination for his youthful stepdaughter, he would have divorced his wife the first year of his consulate, and that indirect proposals on that subject had already been made her by Talleyrand. It was then reported that Bonaparte had his eyes fixed upon a Russian Princess, and that from the friendship which the late Emperor Paul professed for him, no obstacles to the match were expected to be encountered at St. Petersburg. The untimely end of this Prince, and the supplications of his wife and daughter, have since altered his intent, and Madame Napoleon and her children are now, if I may use the expression, incorporated and naturalized with the Bonaparte family.
But what has lately occurred here will better serve to show that Bonaparte is neither averse nor indifferent to the sex. You read last summer in the public prints of the then Minister of the Interior (Chaptal) being made a Senator; and that he was succeeded by our Ambassador at Vienna Champagny. This promotion was the consequence of a disgrace, occasioned by his jealousy of his mistress, a popular actress, Mademoiselle George, one of the handsomest women of this capital. He was informed by his spies that this lady frequently, in the dusk of the evening, or when she thought him employed in his office, went to the house of a famous milliner in the Rue St. Honor, where, through a door in an adjoining passage, a person, who carefully avoided showing his face, always entered immediately before or after her, and remained as long as she continued there. The house was then by his orders beset with spies, who were to inform him the next time she went to the milliner. To be near at hand, he had hired an apartment in the neighbourhood, where the very next day her visit to the milliner's was announced to him. While his secretary, with four other persons, entered the milliner's house through the street door, Chaptal, with four of his spies, forced the door of the passage open, which was no sooner done than the disguised gallant was found, and threatened in the most rude manner by the Minister and his companions. He would have been still worse used had not the unexpected appearance of Duroc and a whisper to Chaptal put a stop to the fury of this enraged lover. The incognito is said to have been Bonaparte himself, who, the same evening, deprived Chaptal of his ministerial portfolio, and would have sent him to Cayenne, instead of to the Senate, had not Duroc dissuaded his Sovereign from giving an eclat to an affair which it, would be best to bury in oblivion.
Chaptal has never from that day approached Mademoiselle George, and, according to report, Napoleon has also renounced this conquest in favour of Duroc, who is at least her nominal gallant. The quantity of jewels with which she has recently been decorated, and displayed with so much ostentation in the new tragedy, 'The Templars', indicate, however, a Sovereign rather than a subject for a lover. And, indeed, she already treats the directors of the theatre, her comrades, and even the public, more as a real than a theatrical Princess. Without any cause whatever, but from a mere caprice to see the camp on the coast, she set out, without leave of absence, and without any previous notice, on the very day she was to play; and this popular and interesting tragedy was put off for three weeks, until she chose to return to her duty.
When complaint was made to the prefects of the palace, now the governors of our theatres, Duroc said that the orders of the Emperor were that no notice should be taken of this 'etourderie', which should not occur again.