[89] Fouché, tom. ii., p. 80.
[90] Mémoires de Fouché, tom. ii., p. 90.
[91] Fouché afterwards remembered, that an individual in his neighbourhood, mayor of a municipality, and whom he himself had employed in matters of police, had one morning intruded rather hastily on him in his study, under pretext of pleading the cause of a distressed tenant; and concluded, that while he was searching for the papers concerning his visitor's ostensible business, Mr. Mayor had an opportunity to glance at the sheets on his scrutoire, where the repetition of V. M. I. and R. M. (intimating your Imperial and Royal Majesty,) betrayed that he was drawing up a memorial to Napoleon, and a word or two of the context explained its purport.
[92] It is not unworthy of notice, that the Emperor's mother (Madame Mère, as she was termed) always expressed a presentiment, that the fortunes of her family, splendid as they were, would be altered before her death; and when ridiculed by her children for her frugal disposition, she used to allege she was saving money for them in their distress; and in fact she lived to apply her boards to that purpose.—S.
[93] Meredith's Memorials of Charles John, King of Sweden and Norway, p. 25.
[94] See Appendix to this Volume, [No. I.]
[95] See Meredith's Memorials, p. 38.
[96] In the Moniteur, a scandalous intrigue was repeatedly alluded to as existing between this princess and the Emperor Alexander, and both to M. Las Cases, and to others; Buonaparte affirmed the same personally; telling, at the same time, as a good jest, that he himself had kept the King of Prussia out of the way, to provide the lovers a stolen meeting [vol. ii., p. [213].] These averments are so inconsistent with the character universally assigned to this high-spirited and unhappy princess, that we have no hesitation to assign them directly to calumny; a weapon which Napoleon never disdained to wield, whether in private or national controversy.—S.
[97] Histoire de l'Ambassade dans le Grand Duché de Varsovie en 1812.
[98] The fact is now pretty generally admitted to have been as stated in the text. But in the public treaty, it appeared that France negotiated an armistice, called that of Slobodsea, by which it was stipulated, that the two disputed provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia were to be restored to the Turks. But the armistice, as had previously been settled between Napoleon and Alexander, broke up without any such restoration; and a congress, which was held at Jassy for the arrangement of the quarrel between the Porte and Court of St. Petersburgh, having been also dissolved without coming to an agreement, the war between the Turks and Russians recommenced upon the Danube.—S.