and still more secret execution; defending arbitrary imprisonment, exiles, and transportations. This displeased Madame Liebeau, who exclaimed-" Since the colonel is so fond of an imperial government, he can have no objection to remain a faithful subject, whenever my husband, Liebeau, becomes an Antoine the First, Emperor of the French." Frial smiled with contempt. "You seem to think it improbable," said Liebeau. “I, Antoine Liebeau—I have more prospect of being an emperor, than Napoleone Buonaparte had ten years ago, when he was only a colonel, and arrested as a terrorist; and am not I a Frenchman ? and is he not a foreigner ? Come, shake hands with me ; as soon as I am an emperor, depend upon it, you shall be a general, and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour."-"Ah! my jewel," interrupted Madame Liebeau; "how happy will France then be. You are such a friend of peace; we will then have no wars-no contributions-ail the English my lords may then come here and spend their money-nobody cares about where or how. Will you not then, my sweet love, make all the gentlemen here your chamberlains, and permit me to accept of all the ladies of the compafor my maids of honour or ladies in waiting?

ny

"Softly, softly, cried Frial, who now began to be as intoxicated and as ambitious as the general, "Whenever Napoleone dies, I have more hope, more claim, and more right than you to the throne. I am in actual service; and had not Buonaparte been the same, he might have still remained upon the half-pay, obscure and despised. Were not most of the field-marshals and generals under him now, above him ten years ago? May I not, ten years hence, if I am satisfied with you, General Liebeau, make you also a field-marshal, or my minister of war? and you, Madame Liebeau, a lady of my wife's wardrobe, as soon as I am married? I, too, have my plans, and my views, and, perhaps, one day you will recollect this conversation, and not be sorry for my acquaintance."-" What, you a colonel, an emperor, before me, who have so long been a general?" howled Liebeau, who was no longer able to speak. "I would sooner knock your brains. out with this bottle, than suffer such a precedence; and my wife a lady of your wardrobe! she who has possessed from her birth the soul of an empress! No, Sir! never will I take the oath to you, nor suffer any body else to take it."

"Then I will punish you as a rebel," retorted Frial; “ and as sure as you stand here you shall be shot." Liebeau then rose up to fetch his sword, but the company interfered, and the dispute about the priority of claim to the throne of France, between the ci-devant drummer and ci-devant jockey, was left undecided. From the words and looks of several of the captains present, I think that they seemed in their own opinions, to have as much prospect and expectation to reign over the French empire, as either the General Liebeau or Colonel Frial.

As soon as I returned home, I wrote down this curious conversation and this debate about supremacy. To what a degradation is the highest rank in my unfortunate country reduced, when two such personages seriously contend about it! I collected more subjects for meditation and melancholy in this low company (where, by the by, I witnessed more vulgarity and more indecencies than I had before seen during my life) than from all former scenes of humiliation and disgust since my return here. When I the next day mentioned it to General de M————, whom you have known an emigrant officer in your service, but whom policy has since ranged under the colours of Buonaparte, he assured me that these discussions about the imperial throne are very frequent among the superior officers, and have caused many bloody scenes; and that hardly any of our generals of any talents exist, who have not the same arriere pensee of some day or other. Napoleone, cannot, therefore, well be ignorant of the many dynasties here now rivalling that of the Buonapartes, and who wait only for his exit, to tear his senatus consultum, his will, and his family, as well as each other to pieces.

MY LORD,

LETTER L.

Paris, September, 1805.

I WAS lately invited to a tea-party by one of our rich upstarts, who, from a scavenger, is, by the revolution and by Buonaparte, transformed into a legislator, commander of the Legion of Honour, and possessor of wealth amounting to eighteen millions of livres (75,000l.) In this house. I saw, for the first time, the famous Madame Chevalier, the mistress, and the indirect

cause of the untimely end of the unfortunate Paul the First. She is very short, fat and coarse. I do not know whether prejudice, from what I have heard of her vile, greedy, and immoral character, influenced my feelings, but she appeared to me a most artful, vain and disagreeable woman. She looked to be about thirty-six years of age; and though she might, when younger, have been well made, it is impossible that she could ever have been handsome. The features of her face are far from being regular. Her mouth is large, her eyes hollow, and her nose short. Her language is that of brothels, and her manners correspond with her expressions. She is the daughter of a workman at a silk manufactory at Lyons; she ceased to be a maid, before she had attained the age of a woman, and lived in a brothel in her native city, kept by a Madame Thibault, where her husband first became acquainted with her. Having then a tolerable good voice, and being young and insinuating, he introduced her on the same stage where he was one of the inferior dancers. Here, in a short time, she improved so much, that she was engaged as a supernumerary; her salary in France as an actress was, however, never above twelve hundred livres in the year, (50%) which was four hundred more than her husband received.

He, with several other inferior and unprincipled actor's and dancers, quitted the stage in the beginning of the revolution for the clubs; and instead of diverting his audience, resolved to reform and regenerate his nation. His name is found in the annals of the crimes perpetrated at Lyons, by the side of that of a Fouche, a Collot d'Herbois, and other wicked offsprings of rebellion.With all other terrorists he was imprisoned for some time after the death of Robespierre: as soon as restored to liberty, he set out with his wife for Hamburgh, where some amateurs had constructed a French theatre.

It was in the Autumn of 1795, when Madame Chevalier was first heard of in the north of Europe, where her arrival occasioned a kind of theatrical war between the French, American and Hamburgh jacobins on one side, and the English emigrant loyalists on the other. Having no money to continue her pretended journey to Sweden, she asked the manager of the French theatre at Hamburgh, to allow her a benefit, and to play on that night. She selected, of course, a part in which she could appear to the

most advantage, and was deservedly applauded. The very next evening, the jacobin cabal called the manager upon the stage, and insisted that Madame Chevalier should be given a regular engagement. He replied, that no place suitable to her talents was vacant, and that it would be ungenerous to turn away for her sake, another actress with whom the public had hitherto declared their satisfaction. The jacobins continued inflexible, and here, as well as every where else, supported injustice by violence. the patriotism of the husband, more than the charms of the wife, was known to have produced this indecent fracas, which, for upwards of a week, interrupted the plays, all anti-jacobins united to restore order. In this they would, perhaps, have finally succeeded, had not the bayonets of the Hamburgh soldiers interfered, and forced this precious piece of revolutionary furniture upon the manager and upon the stage.

After displaying her gratitude in her own way, to each individual of the jacobin levy-en-masse in her favour, she was taken into keeping by a then rich and married Hamburgh merchant, who made her a present of a richly and elegantly furnished house, and expended, besides, ten thousand louis d'ors on her, before he had a mortifying conviction, that some other had partaken those favours for which he had so dearly paid. A countryman of your's then showed himself with more noise than honour upon the scene, and made his debut with a phaton and four, which he presented to his theatrical goddess, together with his own dear portrait, set round with large and valuable diamonds. Madame Chevalier, however, soon afterwards hearing that her English gallant had come over to Germany for economy, and that his credit with his banker was nearly exhausted, had his portrait changed for that of another and richer lover, preserving, however, the diamonds; and she exposed this inconstancy even upon the stage, by suspending, as if in triumph, the new portrait fastened on her bosom. The Englishman wishing to retrieve his phaton and horses, which he protested only to have lent his belle, found that she had put the whole equipage into a kind of lottery, or raffle, to which all her numerous friends had subscribed, and that an Altona Jew had won it.

The successor of your countryman was a Russian nobleman, succeeded in his turn, by a Polish Jew, who was ruined and dis

carded within three months. She then became the property of the public, and by her active industry, during a stay of four years at Hamburgh, she was enabled to remit to France, before her departure for Russia, one million two hundred thousand livres, (50,000) Her popularity was, however, at that period, very much on the decline, as she had stooped to the most indelicate means to collect money, and to extort it from her friends and acquaintances. She had always lists of subscriptions in her pocket; some with proposals to play in her lotteries, for trinkets unnecessary to her; others, to procure her, by the assistance of subscribers, some trinkets which she wanted.

I suppose it to be no secret to you, that the female agents of Talleyrand's secret diplomacy are frequently more useful than those of the other sex. I am told that Madame Rochechouart was that friend of our minister who engaged Madame Chevalier in her Russian expedition, and who instructed her how to act her parts well at St. Petersburgh. I need not repeat what is so well known, that after this artful emissary had ruined the domestic happines of the Russian monarch, she degraded him in his political transactions, and became the indirect cause of his untimely end, in procuring, for a bribe of fifty thousand rubles, in money and jewels, the recall of P Z. one of the principal conspirators against the unfortunate Paul.

The wealth she plundered in the Russian capital, within the short period of twenty months, amounted to much above one million of rubles. For money she procured impunity to crime, and brought upon innocence, the punishment merited by guilt.The scaffolds of Russia were bleeding, and the roads to Siberia crowded with the victims to the avarice of this female demon, who often promised what she was unable to perform; and to silence complaint, added cruelty to fraud; and, after pocketing the bribe, resorted to the executioner, to remove those whom she V had duped. The shocking anecdote of the Sardinian secretary, from whom she swindled near one hundred thousand rubles, and on whom she afterwards persuaded her imperial lover to inflict capital punishment, is too recent and too public, to be unknown or forgotten. A Russian nobleman has assured me, that the number of unfortunate individuals, whom her and her husband's intrigues have caused to suffer capitally, during 1800 and 1801,