carry off the celebrated Madonna. In the execution of this commission, he displayed a conduct worthy the littleness of his denius and the criminality of his mind. The wooden image of the holy virgin, a black gown, said to have appertained to her, together with three broken china plates, which the Roman Catnolic faithful have for ages believed to have been used by her, were presented by him to the Directory with a cruelly scandalous show, accompanied by a horribly blasphemous letter. He passed the next night, after he had perpetrated this sacrilege, with two prostitutes, in the chapel of the holy virgin; and on the next morning placed one of them naked on the pedestal where the statue of the virgin had formerly stood; and ordered all the devotees at Loretto, and two leagues round, to prostrate themselves before her. This shocking command, occasioned the premature death of fifteen ladies, two of whom, who were nuns, died on the spot, on beholding the horrid outrage; and many more were deprived of their reason. How barbarously unfeeling must that wretch be, who, in bereaving the religious, the pious, and the conscientious of their consolation and hope, adds the tormenting reproach of apostacy, by forcing virtue upon its knees to bow before what it knows to be guilt and infamy !!!

A traitor to his associates as to his God, it was he, who, in November 1799, presented at St. Cloud the Decree, which excluded all those who opposed Buonaparte's authority from the council of Five Hundred, and appointed the two committees, which made him a First Consul. In reward for this act of treach ery, he was nominated to a place in the Conservative Senate. He has now ranked himself among our modern saints, goes regularly to mass, and confesses; has made a brother of his, who was a drummer, an abbe; and his assiduity about the cardinal was, probably, with a view to obtain advancement for this edifying priest.

The Cardinal de Belloy is now ninety-six years of age, being born in 1709, and has been a Bishop for fifty-three years, but during the revolution was proscribed with all other prelates.He remained, however, in France, where his age saved him from the guillotine; but not from being reduced to the greatest want. A descendant of a noble family, and possessing an unpolluted character, Buonaparte fixed upon him, as one of the pillars for the

re-establishment of the catholic worship: made him an archbishop of Paris, and procured him the rank of a cardinal from Rome. But he is now, in his second childhood, entirely directed by his grand vicars Malaret, De Mons, and Legeas, who are in the pay of, and absolutely devoted to, Buonaparte. An innocent instrument in their hands, of those impious compliments, pronounced by him to the Emperor and the Empress, he did not perhaps even understand the meaning. For such a man the vile and artful Villetard might extort any promise. I observed, however, with pleasure, that he was watched by the grand vicar Malaret, who seldom loses sight of his eminence.

These two so opposite characters, I mean de Belloy and Villetard, are already speaking evidences of the composition of the society, at Madame de C- -n's. But I will tell you something still more striking. This lady is famous for her elegant services of plate, as much as for her delicate taste, in entertaining her I parties. After the supper on this night, eleven silver and four 5 gold plates, besides numerous silver and gold spoons, forks, &c. were missed; she informed Fouche of her loss, who had her house surrounded by spies, with orders not to let any servant pass, without undergoing a strict search. The first gentleman who called for his carriage, was his excellency, the counsellor of state and grand officer of the Legion of Honour, Treilhard. His servants were stopped and the cause explained. They willingly, and against the protest of their master, suffered themselves to be searched. Nothing was found upon them; but the police agents observing the full-dressed hat of their master rather bulky under his arm, tock the liberty to look into it, where they found one of Madame de Cn's gold plates, and two of her spoons. His excellency immediately ordered his servants to be arrested, for having concealed their theft there. Pouche, however, when called out, advised his friend to forgive them for misplacing them as the less said on the subject, the better. When Madame de Cn heard of this discovery, she asked Fouche to recal his order, or to alter it; "a repetition of such misplacings in the hats or in the pockets of the masters," said she, "would injure the reputation of my house and company." She never recovered the remainder of her loss, and that she might not be exposed in future to the same occurrences, she the following day bought two services of china, to be used when she had mixed society.

Treilhard had, before the revolution, the reputation of being an honest man, and an able advocate; but has since joined the criminals of all factions, being an accomplice in their guilt and a sharer of their spoils. In the Convention he voted for the death of Louis XVI. and pursued without mercy the unfortunate Maria Antoinette to the scaffold. During his missions in the departments, wherever he went the guillotine was erected, and blood flowed in streams. He was, nevertheless, accused by Robespierre of moderatism. At Lisle, in 1797, and at Rastadt, in 1798, he negotiated as a plenipotentiary with the representatives of princes, and in 1799, corresponded as a director with emperors and kings, to whom he wrote as his great and dear friends. He is now a counsellor of state, in the section of legislation, and enjoys a fortune of several millions of livres, arising from estates in the country and from leases in the capital. As this accident at Madame de C-n's was soon public, his friends gave out that he has of late been exceedingly absent, and from absence of mind, puts every thing he can lay hold of into his pocket. He is not a favourite with Madame Buonaparte; and she asked her husband to dismiss and disgrace him for an act so disgraceful to a grand officer of the Legion of Honour, but was answered, "Were I to turn away all the thieves and rogues that encompass me I should soon cease to reign. I despise them, but I must employ them.”

It is whispered that the police have discovered another of Madame de Cn's lost gold plates, at a pawn-broker's, where it had been pledged by the wife of another counsellor of state, Francais de Nantes. This I give you merely as a report; though the fact is that Madame Francais is very fond of gambling, but very unfortunate; and she, with other of our fashionable ladies, has more than once resorted to her charms, for the payment of her gambling debts.

MY LORD,

LETTER XLI.

Paris, September, 1805.

SINCE my return here, I have never neglected to present my self before our sovereign, on his days of grand reviews, and grand diplomatic audiences. I never saw him more condescend

ing, more agreeable, or, at least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set out to be inaugurated a king of Italy; nor worse tempered, petulant, agitated, abrupt, and rude, than at his first grand audience after his arrival from Milan, where this ceremony had been performed. I am not the only one who made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or ill humour; and it was only requisite to have eyes and ears, to see and be disgusted at the difference of behaviour.

I have heard a female friend of Madame Buonaparte explain, in part, the cause of this alteration. Just before he set out for Italy, the agreeable news of the success of the first Rochefort squadron in the West-Indies, and the escape of our Toulon fleet from the vigilance of Lord Nelson, highly elevated his spirits, as it was the first naval enterprise of any consequence since his reign. I am certain that one grand naval victory would flatter his vanity and ambition more than all the glory of one of his most brilliant continental campaigns. He had also, at that time, great expectations that another negotiation with Russia would keep the continent submissive under his dictature, until he should find an opportunity of crushing your power. You may be sure that he had no small hopes of striking a blow in your country, after a junction of our fleet with the Spanish: not by any engagement between our Brest fleet and your Channel fleet, but under a supposition that you would detach squadrons to the East and West-Indies, in search of the combined fleet, which, by an unexpected return, according to orders, would have then left us masters of the Channel, and, if joined by the Batavian fleet, perhaps even of the North Sea. By the incomprehensible activity of Lord Nelson, and by the defeat (or, as we call it here, the negative victory) of Villeneuve and Gravina, all this first prospect had vanished. Our vengeance against a nation of shopkeepers, we were not only under the necessity of postponing, but, from the unpolite threats and treaties of the cabinet of St. Petersburg, with those of Vienna and St. James's, we were on the eve of a continental war, and our gun-boats, instead of being useful in carrying an army to the destruction of the tyrants of the seas, were burthensome, as an army was necessary to guard them, and to prevent these tyrants from capturing or destroying them. Such changes in so short a period of time as three

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months, might irritate a temper less impatient than that of Napoleone the first.

At his grand audience here, even after the army of England had moved towards Germany, when the die was cast, and his mind should, therefore, have been made up, he was almost insupportable. The low bows, and the still humbler expressions of the Prussian ambassador, the Marquis of Lucchesini, were hardly noticed; and the Saxon ambassador, Count de Buneau, was addressed in a language that no well-bred master ever uses in speaking to a menial servant. He did not cast a look, or utter a word, that was not an insult to the audience, and a disgrace to his rank. I never before saw him vent his rage and disappointment so indiscriminately. We were, indeed, (if I may use the term) humbled and trampled upon en masse. Some he put out of countenance, by staring angrily at them; others he shocked by his hoarse voice, and harsh words; and all-all of us were afraid, in our turn, of experiencing something worse than our neighbours. I observed more than one minister, and more than one general, change colour, and even perspire, at his majesty's approach.

I believe the members of the foreign diplomatic corps here will all agree with me, that, at a future congress, the restoration of the ancient and becoming etiquette of the kings of France would be as desirable a point to demand from the Emperor of the French, as the restoration of the balance of power.

Before his army of England quitted its old quarters on the coast, the officers and men often felt the effects of his ungovernable temper. When several regiments of grenadiers, of the division of Oudinot, were defiling before him, on the 25th of last month, he frequently, and severally, though without cause, reprobated their manner of marching; and once rode up to captain Fournois, pushed him forwards with the point of a small cane, calling out "Sacre Dieu! advance, you walk like a turkey." In the first moment of indignation, the captain, striking at the cane with his sword, made a push or a gesture, as if threatening the person of Buonaparte, who called out to his aid-de-camp, Savary, "Disarm the villain, and arrest him!" "It is unnecessary, the captain replied, "I have served a tyrant, and merit my fate !"so saying, he thrust his sword through his heart. His whole