riage, according to the republican regulations, had only been celebrated by the municipality at Ajaccio. Fesch, therefore, upon again entering the bosom of the church, left his municipal wife and children to shift for themselves, considering himself still, according to the canonical laws, a bachelor. But Madame Fesch, hearing, in 1801, of her ci-devant husband's promotion, to the Archbishopric of Lyons, wrote to him for some succours, being, with her children, reduced to great misery. Madame Lætitia Buonaparte answered her letter, inclosing a draft of six hundred livres, 257. informing her, that the same sum would be. paid her every six months, as long as she continued with her children, to reside at Corsica ; but that it would cease the instant she left that island. Either thinking herself not sufficiently paid for her discretion, or enticed by s me enemy of the Buonaparte family, she arrived secretly at Lyons in October last year, where she remained unknown till the arrival of the Pope. On the first day his Holiness gave there his public benediction, she found means to pierce the crowd, and to approach his person, when Cardinal Fesch was by his side. Profiting by a moment's silence, she called out loudly, throwing herself at his feet: "Holy Father! I am the lawful wife of Cardinal Fesch, and these are our children; he cannot, he dares not, deny this truth. Had he behaved liberally to me, I should not have disturbed him in his present grandeur; I supplicate you, Holy Father, not to restore me my husband, but to force him to provide for lis wife and children, according to his present circumstances." "Matta--ella e matta, santissimo padre! She is mad-she is mad-Holy Father," said the Cardinal; and the good Pontiff ordered her to be taken care of, to prevent her from doing herself or the children any mischief. She was, indeed, taken care of, because nobody ever since heard what has become either of her or her children; and as they have not returned to Corsica, probably some snug retreat has been allotted them in France.

The purple was never disgraced by a greater libertine than Cardinal Fesch: his amours are numerous, and have often involved him in disagreeable scrapes. He had in 1803 an unpleasant adventure at Lyons, which has since made his stay in that city but short. Having thrown his handkerchief at the wife of a. manufacturer of the name of Girot, she accepted it; and gave

him an appointment at her house, at a time in the evening, when her husband usually went to the play. His Eminence arrived in disguise, and was received with open arms. But he was hardly seated by her side, before the door of a closet was burst open, and his shoulders smarted from the lashes inflicted by an offended husband. In vain did he mention his name and rank; they rather increased than decreased the fury of Girot, who pretended it was utterly impossibe for a Cardinal and Archbishop to be thus overtaken with the wife of one of his flock; at last Madame Girot proposed a pecuniary accommodation, which, after some opposition, was acceded to; and his Eminence signed a bond for one hundred thousand livres, 4,000l. upon condition that nothing should transpire of this intrigue-a high price ènough for a sound drubbing. On the day when the bond was due, Girot and his wife were both arrested by the police commissary, Dubois, (a brother of the prefect of police at Paris) accused of being connected with coiners, a capital crime at present in this country. In a search made in their house, bad money to the amount of three thousand livres, 1257. was discovered; which they had received the day before from a man who called himself a-merchant from Paris, but who was a police spy sent to entrap them. After giving up the bond of the Cardinal, the Emperor graciously remitted the capital punishment, upon condition that they should be transported for life to Cayenne.

This is the prelate on whom Buonaparte intends to confer the Roman tiara, and to constitute a successor of St. Peter. It would not be the least remarkable event, in the beginning of the remarkable nineteenth century, were we to witness the Papal throne occupied by a man, who, from a singing boy, became a renegado slave, from a Mussulman a constitutional curate; from a tavern-keeper an archbishop; from the son of a pedlar, the uncle of an Emperor; and from the husband of the daughter of a tinker, a member of the sacred college.

His sister, Madame Lætitia Buonaparte, presented him, in 1802, with an elegant library, for which she had paid six hundred thousand livres, 25,000l. and his nephew Napoleone allows him a yearly pension double that amount. Besides his dignity as a prelate, his Eminence is ambassador from France at Rome, a Knight of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece, a grand officer

of the Legion of Honour, and a grand almoner of the Emperor of the French.

The Archbishop of Paris is now į his ninety-sixth year; and at his death, Cardinal Fesch is to be transferred to the see of this capital, in expectation of the triple crown, and the keys of St. Peter.

MY LORD,

LETTER XVIII.

Paris, August, 1805.

THE amiable and accomplished Amelia-Frederique, Princess Dowager of the late Electoral Prince Charles Louis of Baden, born a Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, has procured the Electoral House of Baden, the singular honour of giving consorts to three reigning and sovereign Princes; to an Emperor of Russia, to a King of Sweden, and to the Elector of Bavaria. Such a distinction, and such alliances, called the attention of those at the head of our Revolution; who, after attempting in vain to blow up hereditary thrones, by the aid of sans-culottes incendiaries, seated sans-culottes upon thrones, that they might degrade what was not yet ripe for destruction.

Charles Frederick, the reigning Elector of Baden, is now near fourscore years of age. At this period of life, if any passions remain, avarice is more common than ambition; because treasures may be hoarded without bustle, while activity is absolutely necessary to push forward to the goal of distinction. Haying bestowed a new King on Tuscany, Buonaparte and Talleyrand also resolved to confer new Electors on Germany. A more advantageous fraternity could not be established between the innovators here, and their opposers in other countries, than by incorporating the grand father-in-law of so many Sovereigns with their own revolutionary brotherhood; to humble him by a new rank, and to disgrace him by indemnities obtained from their hands. An intrigue between our minister, Talleyrand, and the Baden minister, Edelsheim, transformed the oldest Margrave of Germany into its youngest Elector; and extended his domin ions by the spoils obtained at the expense of the rightful owners.

The invasion of the Baden territory in time of peace, and the seizure of the Duke d'Enghien, though under the protection of the laws of nations and hospitality, must have soon convinced Baron Edelshiem what return his friend Talleyrand expected: and that Buonaparte thought he had a natural right to insult, by his attacks, those he had dishonoured by his connexions.

This minister, Baron Edelsheim, is half an illuminato, half a philosopher, half a politician, and half a revolutionist. He was, long before he was admitted into the council chamber of his prince, half an atheist, half an intriguer, and half a spy, in the pay of Frederic the Great of Prussia. His entry upon the stage at Berlin, and particuliarly the first parts he was destined to act, was curious and extraordinary: whether he acquitted himself better in this capacity than he has since in his political one, is not known. He was afterwards sent to this capital, to execute a commission, of which he acquitted himself very ill; exposing himself rashly, without profit or service to his employer. Frederic II. dreading the tediousness of a proposed Congress at Augsbourgh, wished to send a private cmissary to sound the King of France. For this purpose he chose Edelsheim as a person least liable to suspicion. The project of Frederic was to indemnify the King of Poland for his first losses, by robbing the ecclesiastical Princes of Germany. This Louis XV. totally rejected; and Edelsheim returned with his answer to the Prussian Monarch, then at Freyberg. From thence he afterwards departed for London, made his communications, and was once again sent back to Paris, on pretence that he had left some of his travelling trunks there; and the Bailli de Fouley, the anibassador of the Knights of Malta, being persuaded that the cabinet of Versailles was effectually desirous of peace, was, as he had been before, the mediator. The Bailli was deceived. The Duke de Choiseul, the then prime minister, indecently enough, threw Edelsheim into the Bastille, in order to search or seize his papers; which, however, were secured elsewhere., Edelsheim was released on the morrow, but obliged to depart the kingdom by the way of Turin, as related by Frederic II. in his History of the Seven Years War. On his return he was disgraced and continued so until 1778, when he again was used as emissary to various courts of Germany. In 1786, the Elector of Baden sent him

to Berlin, on the accession of Frederic William II. as a complimentary envoy. This monarch, when he saw him, could not forbear laughing at the high wisdom of the court that selected such a personage for such an embassy, and of his own sagacity in accepting of it. He quitted the capital of Prussia as he came. there, with an opinion of himself, that neither the royal smiles of contempt had altered or diminished.

You see by this account that Edelsheim has long been a partisan of the pillage of Germany, called indemnities; and long habituated to affronts, as well as to plots. To all his other halfqualities, half-modesty can hardly be added when he calls himself, or suffers himself to be called, "the Talleyrand of Carlsruhe." He accompanied his Prince last year to Mentz; where this old Sovereign was not treated by Buonaparte in the most decorous or decent manner, being obliged to wait for hours in his antichamber, and afterwards stand during the levees, in the drawing rooms of Napoleone, or of his wife, without the offer of a chair, or an invitation to sit down. It was here where, by a secret treaty, Buonaparte became the Sovereign of Baden, if suvereignty consists in the disposal of the financial and military resources of a state; and they were agreed to be assigned over to him, whenever he should deem it proper or necessary to invade the German Empire, in return for his protection against the Emperor of Germany, who can have no more interest than intent to attack a country so distant from his hereditary dominions, and whose Sovereign is besides the grandfather of the consort of his nearest and best ally.

Talleyrand often amused himself at Mentz with playing on the vanity and affected consequence of Edelsheim, who was delighted, if at any time our minister took him aside, or whispered to him as in confidence. One morning, at the assembly of the Elector Arch-Chancellor, where Edelsheim was creeping and cringing about him as usual, he laid hold of his arm, and walked with him to the upper part of the room. In a quarter of an hour they both joined the company, Edelsheim unusually puffed up with vanity. "I will lay any bet, gentlemen," said Talleyrand, "that you cannot, with all your united wits, guess the grand subject of my conversation with the grand Baron Edelsheim.” Without waiting for an answer, he continued: "As the Baron