and that a momentary effusion of kindness and generosity can but little alleviate the frequent pangs caused by repeated insults and oppression.  Fortunately, Madame Napoleon’s disposition is proof against rudeness as well as against brutality.  If what her friend and consoler, Madame Delucay, reports of her is not exaggerated, her tranquillity is not much disturbed nor her happiness affected by these explosions of passionate authority, and she prefers admiring, in undisturbed solitude, her diamond box to the most beautiful prospects in the most agreeable company; and she inspects with more pleasure in confinement, her rich wardrobe, her beautiful china, and her heavy plate, than she would find satisfaction, surrounded with crowds, in comtemplating Nature, even in its utmost perfection.  “The paradise of Madame Napoleon,” says her friend, “must be of metal, and lighted by the lustre of brilliants, else she would decline it for a hell and accept Lucifer himself for a spouse, provided gold flowed in his infernal domains, though she were even to be scorched by its heat.”

LETTER XIV.

LETTER XIV.

Paris, August, 1805.

My lord:—­I believe that I have mentioned to you, when in England, that I was an old acquaintance of Madame Napoleon, and a visitor at the house of her first husband.  When introduced to her after some years’ absence, during which fortune had treated us very differently, she received me with more civility than I was prepared to expect, and would, perhaps, have spoken to me more than she did, had not a look of her husband silenced her.  Madame Louis Bonaparte was still more condescending, and recalled to my memory what I had not forgotten how often she had been seated, when a child, on my lap, and played on my knees with her doll.  Thus they behaved to me when I saw them for the first time in their present elevation; I found them afterwards, in their drawing-rooms or at their routs and parties, more shy and distant.  This change did not much surprise me, as I hardly knew any one that had the slightest pretension to their acquaintance who had not troubled them for employment or borrowed their money, at the same time that they complained of their neglect and their breach of promises.  I continued, however, as much as etiquette and decency required, assiduous, but never familiar:  if they addressed me, I answered with respect, but not with servility; if not, I bowed in silence when they passed.  They might easily perceive that I did not intend to become an intruder, nor to make the remembrance of what was past an apology or a reason for applying for present favours.  A lady, on intimate terms with Madame Napoleon, and once our common friend, informed me, shortly after the untimely end of the lamented Duc d’ Enghien, that she had been asked whether she knew anything that could be done for me, or whether