The Emperor, before leaving Brienne to return to Fontainebleau, required the mayor to give him a written account of the most pressing needs of the commune, and left on his departure a considerable sum for the poor and the hospitals.

Passing through Troyes, the Emperor left there, as everywhere else, souvenirs of his generosity.  The widow of a general officer, living in retirement at Joinville (I regret that I have forgotten the name of this venerable lady, who was more than an octogenarian), came to Troyes, notwithstanding her great age, to ask aid from his Majesty.  Her husband having served only before the Revolution, the pension which she had enjoyed had been taken from her under the Republic, and she was in the greatest destitution.  The brother of General Vouittemont, mayor of a commune in the suburbs of Troyes, was kind enough to consult me as to what should be done in order to present this lady to the Emperor; and I advised him to have her name placed on the list of his Majesty’s private audiences.  I myself took the liberty of speaking of Madame de to the Emperor; and the audience was granted, though I do not pretend to attribute the merit of it to myself, for in traveling the Emperor was always very accessible.

When the good lady came to attend the audience with M. de Vouittemont, to whom his municipal scarf gave the right of entrance, I happened to meet them, and she stopped to thank me for the little service which she insisted I had rendered her, and mentioned that she had been obliged to pawn the six silver plates which alone remained to her, in order to pay the expenses of her journey; that, having arrived at Troyes in a poor farm wagon, covered with a cloth thrown over a hoop, and which had shaken her terribly, she could find no place in the inns, all of which were filled on account of the arrival of their Majesties; and she would have been obliged to sleep in her wagon had it not been for the kind consideration of M. de Vouittemont, who had given up his room to her, and offered his services.  In spite of her more than eighty years, and her distress, this respectable lady related her story with an air of gentle gayety, and at the close threw a grateful glance at her guide, on whose arm she was leaning.

At that moment the usher came to announce that her turn had come, and she entered the saloon of audience.  M. de Vouittemont awaited her return while conversing with me; and on her return she related to us, scarcely able to control her emotion, that the Emperor had in the kindest manner received the memorial she presented to him, had read it attentively, and passed it to a minister who was near him, with the order to do her justice this very day.

The next day she received the warrant for a pension of three thousand francs, the first year’s pay being handed her at once.

At Lyons, of which Cardinal Fesch was archbishop, the Emperor lodged in the archiepiscopal palace. [Joseph Fesch, born in Corsica, 1763, was half-brother to Napoleon’s mother.  Archbishop of Lyons 1801, cardinal 1803, died 1839]