During the course of his political life he had been so generally feared that he was thought unsocial, and it is not difficult to explain the causes of that opinion.  The life, morals, and fidelity of Piombo made him obnoxious to most courtiers.  In spite of the fact that delicate missions were constantly intrusted to his discretion which to any other man about the court would have proved lucrative, he possessed an income of not more than thirty thousand francs from an investment in the Grand Livre.  If we recall the cheapness of government securities under the Empire, and the liberality of Napoleon towards those of his faithful servants who knew how to ask for it, we can readily see that the Baron di Piombo must have been a man of stern integrity.  He owed his plumage as baron to the necessity Napoleon felt of giving him a title before sending him on missions to foreign courts.

Bartolomeo had always professed a hatred to the traitors with whom Napoleon surrounded himself, expecting to bind them to his cause by dint of victories.  It was he of whom it is told that he made three steps to the door of the Emperor’s cabinet after advising him to get rid of three men in France on the eve of Napoleon’s departure for his celebrated and admirable campaign of 1814.  After the second return of the Bourbons Bartolomeo ceased to wear the decoration of the Legion of honor.  No man offered a finer image of those old Republicans, incorruptible friends to the Empire, who remained the living relics of the two most energetic governments the world has ever seen.  Though the Baron di Piombo displeased mere courtiers, he had the Darus, Drouots, and Carnots with him as friends.  As for the rest of the politicians, he cared not a whiff of his cigar’s smoke for them, especially since Waterloo.

Bartolomeo di Piombo had bought, for the very moderate sum which Madame Mere, the Emperor’s mother, had paid him for his estates in Corsica, the old mansion of the Portenduere family, in which he had made no changes.  Lodged, usually, at the cost of the government, he did not occupy this house until after the catastrophe of Fontainebleau.  Following the habits of simple persons of strict virtue, the baron and his wife gave no heed to external splendor; their furniture was that which they bought with the mansion.  The grand apartments, lofty, sombre, and bare, the wide mirrors in gilded frames that were almost black, the furniture of the period of Louis XIV. were in keeping with Bartolomeo and his wife, personages worthy of antiquity.

Under the Empire, and during the Hundred Days, while exercising functions that were liberally rewarded, the old Corsican had maintained a great establishment, more for the purpose of doing honor to his office than from any desire to shine himself.  His life and that of his wife were so frugal, so tranquil, that their modest fortune sufficed for all their wants.  To them, their daughter Ginevra was more precious than the wealth of the whole world.  When, therefore,