|
informed of this expeditious justice, as it is called here, he waited on
Fouche, who threatened even to transport him if he dared to interfere
with the transactions of the police. This banker was himself seized in
the spring of last year by a police agent and some gendarmes, and carried
into exile forty leagues from this capital, where he remained six.
months, until a pecuniary douceur procured him a recall. His crime was
having inquired after General Moreau when in the Temple, and of having
left his card there.
LETTER XVI.
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:--The Prince Borghese has lately been appointed a captain of the
Imperial Guard of his Imperial brother-in-law, Napoleon the First, and is
now in Germany, making his first campaign. A descendant of a wealthy and
ancient Roman family, but born with a weak understanding, he was easily
deluded into the ranks of the revolutionists of his own country, by a
Parisian Abbe, his instructor and governor, and gallant of the Princesse
Borghese, his mother. He was the first secretary of the first Jacobin
club established at Rome, in the spring of 1798; and in December of the
same year, when the Neapolitan troops invaded the Ecclesiastical States,
he, with his present brother-in-law, another hopeful Roman Prince, Santa
Cruce, headed the Roman sans-culottes in their retreat. To show his love
of equality, he had previously served as a common man in a company of
which the captain was a fellow that sold cats' meat and tripe in the
streets of Rome, and the lieutenant a scullion of his mother's kitchen.
Since Imperial aristocracy is now become the order of the day, he is as
insupportable for his pride and vanity as he, some years ago, was
contemptible for his meanness. He married, in 1803, Madame Leclerc, who,
between the death of a first and a wedding with a second husband--a space
of twelve months--had twice been in a fair way to become a mother. Her
portion was estimated at eighteen millions of livres--a sum sufficient to
palliate many 'faux pas' in the eyes of a husband more sensible and more
delicate than her present Serene Idiot, as she styles the Prince
Borghese.
The lady is the favourite sister of Napoleon, the ablest, but also the
most wicked of the female Bonapartes. She had, almost from her infancy,
passed through all the filth of prostitution, debauchery, and profligacy
before she attained her present elevation; rank, however, has not altered
her morals, but only procured her the means of indulging in new excesses.
Ever since the wedding night the Prince Borghese has been excluded from
her bed; for she declared frankly to him, as well as to her brother, that
she would never endure the approach of a man with a bad breath; though
many who, from the opportunities they have had of judging, certainly
ought to know, pretend that her own breath is not the sweetest in the
world. When her husband had marched towards the Rhine, she asked her
brother, as a favour, to procure the Prince Borghese, after a useless
life, a glorious death. This curious demand of a wife was, made in
Madame Bonaparte's drawing-room, in the presence of fifty persons. "You
are always 'etourdie'," replied Napoleon, smiling.
If Bonaparte, however, overlooks the intrigues of his sisters, he is not
so easily pacified when any reports reach him inculpating the virtues of
his sisters-in-law. Some gallants of Madame Joseph Bonaparte have
already disappeared to return no more, or are wandering in the wilds of
Cayenne; but the Emperor is particularly attentive to everything
concerning the morality of Madame Louis, whose descendants are destined
to continue the Bonaparte dynasty. Two officers, after being cashiered,
were, with two of Madame Louis's maids, shut up last month in the Temple,
and have not since been heard of, upon suspicion that the Princess
preferred their society to that of her husband.
Louis Bonaparte, whose constitution has been much impaired by his
|
|