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would go himself to the Temple, and blow out the brains of this unfortunate King. He defended, in the tribune, the massacre 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 Marat, Brissot, Robespierre, nor the Directory, would or could employ him. After the revolution of the 9th November, 1799, Buonaparte 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 Tiruriot had introduced herself to the acquaintance of the Imperial Grenadier Rabais.

MY LORD,

LETTER XXX.

Paris, August, 1805..

BEING considered as a connoisseur, though I have no pretensions, but that of being an amateur, Lucien Buonaparte, 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 Buonaparte'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 show 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 Napoleone, he is abler and better informed than either, and much more open and sinçere. 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 Napoleone the upstart soldier, and in Joseph the former low member of the law; but I defy the most refined courtier to see in Lucien any thing 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 opinions 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 Buonaparte 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 (3,3007.) 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 Napoleone 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 neigbourhood, prevailed on Napoleone to forget his premise, and the farms were sold. As soon as Lucien heard of it, he sent for the count, delivered into his hand an annuity of six thousand livres (250%.) 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 retained 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 popluarity. 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 Napoleone's assumption of the consulate, Lucien was appointed a mi- nister 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 à director of the contributions in the department of the Rhine and Moselle, an office with a salary of twelve thousand livres, (5007.) but producing double that sum. If you meet with any difficulties, write to me- -I am your friend. Take these one hun- · dred louis-d'ors for the expenses of your journey, Adieu !"— This anecdote I have read in Gauvan's own hand-writing, 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(1257) from Lucien, who has never seen her.

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Lucien Buonaparte has another good quality; he is consistent in his political principles. Either from conviction or delusion, he is still a republican; and does not conceal that, had he suspected Napoleone of any intent to re-establish monarchy, much less tyranny, he would have joined those deputies, who, on the 9th of November, 1799, in the sitting at St. Cloud, demanded a de-cree of outlawry against him. If the present quarrel between.

these two brothers were sifted to the bottom, perhaps it would be found to originate more from Lucien's republicanism than from his marriage.

I know, with all France and Europe, that Lucien's youth has been very culpable; that he has committed many indiscretions, much injustice, many imprudences, many errors, and, I fear, even some crimes. I know that he has been the most profligate among the profligate, the most debauched among libertines, the most merciless among plunderers, and the most perverse among rebels. I know that he is accused of being a Septembrizer; of having murdered one wife, and poisoned another; of having been a spy, a denouncer, a persecutor of innocent persons in the reign of terror. I know that he is accused of having fought his brothers-in-law; of having ill-used his mother; and of an incestuous commerce with his own sisters. I have read and heard of these and other enormous accusations; and far be it from me to defend, extenuate, or even deny them. But suppose all his infamy to be real, to be proved, to be authenticated, which it never has been, and, to its whole extent, I am persuaded, never can be; what are the cruel and depraved acts of which Lucien has been accused, to the enormities and barbarities of which Napoleone is convicted. Is the poisoning a wife more criminal than the poisoning a whole hospital of wounded soldiers? or the assisting to kill some confined persons, suspected of being enemies, more atrocious than the massacre, in cold blood, of thousands of disarmed prisoners? Is incest with a sister more shocking to humanity than the well-known, unnatural, pathic

but I will not continue the disgusting comparison. As long as Napoleone is unable to acquit himself of such barbarities and monstrous crimes, he has no right to pronounce Lucien unworthy to be called his brother; nor have Frenchmen, as long as they obey the former as a sovereign, nor has the continent, as long as it salutes him as such, any reason to despise the latter, for crimes which lose their enormity when compared to the horrid perpetrations of his Imperial brother.

An elderly lady, a relation of Lucien's wife, and a person in whose veracity and morality I have the greatest confidence, and for whom he always had evinced more regard than even for his own mother, has repeated to me many of their conversations.

She assures me, that Lucien deplores frequently the want of a good and religious education, and the tempting examples of perversity he met with almost at his entrance upon the revolutionary scene. He says that he determined to get rich per fas aut nefas, because he observed that money was every thing; and that most persons plotted and laboured for power merely to be enabled to gather treasure; though, after they had obtained both, much above their desert and expectation, instead of being satiated, or even satisfied, they bustled and intrigued for more, until success made them unguarded, and prosperity indiscreet, and they became, with their wealth, the easy prey of rival factions. Such was the case of Danton, of Fabre d'Eglantine, of Chabot, of Chaumette, of Stebert, and other contemptible wretches, butchered by Robespierre and his partisans; victims in their turn to men as unjust and sanguinary as themselves. He had therefore laid out a different plan of conduct for himself. He had fixed upon fifty millions of livres (2,100,000.) as the maximum he should wish for; and when that sum was in his possession, he resolved to resign all pretensions to rank and employment, and to enjoy otium cum dignitate. He has kept to his determination, and so regulated his income, that, with the expenses, pomp, and retinue of a prince, he is enabled to make more persons happy and comfortable than his extortions have ruined, or even embarrassed. He now lives like a philosopher, and endeavours to forget the past, to delight in the present, and to be indifferent about futurity. He chose therefore for a wife a lady whom he loved and esteemed, in preference to one whose birth would have been a continual reproach to the meanness of his own origin.

You must with me admire the modesty of a citizen sans-culotte, who, without a shilling in the world, fixes upon fifty millions as a reward for his revolutionary achievements, and with which he would be satisfied to sit down and begin his singular course of singular philosophy. But his success is more extraordinary than his pretensions were extravagant. This immense sum was amassed by him in the short period of four years, chiefly by bribes from foreign courts, and by selling his protections in France..

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