of the character of her protege.  This brought forward your innocence, because it was discovered that, instead of asking for, you had declined the offer she had made you through the Empress.  Write the Princess a letter of thanks.  You have, indeed, had a narrow escape, but it has been so far useful to you, that Government is now aware of your having some secret enemy in power, who is not delicate about the means of injuring you.”

In quitting General Murat, I could not help deploring the fate of a despot, even while I abhorred his unnatural power.  The curses, the complaints, and reproaches for all the crimes, all the violence, all the oppression perpetrated in his name, are entirely thrown upon him, while his situation and occupation do not admit the seeing and hearing everything and everybody himself.  He is often forced, therefore, to judge according to the report of an impostor; to sanction with his name the hatred, malignity, or vengeance of culpable individuals; and to sacrifice innocence to gratify the vile passions of his vilest slave.  I have not so bad an opinion of Bonaparte as to think him capable of wilfully condemning any person to death or transportation, of whose innocence he was convinced, provided that person stood not in the way of his interest and ambition; but suspicion and tyranny are inseparable companions, and injustice their common progeny.  The unfortunate beings on the long list General Murat showed me were, I dare say, most of them as innocent as myself, and all certainly condemned unheard.  But suppose, even, that they had been indiscreet enough to put on mourning for a Prince of the blood of their former Kings, did their imprudence deserve the same punishment as the deed of the robber, the forger, or the housebreaker? and, indeed, it was more severe than what our laws inflict on such criminals, who are only condemned to transportation for some few years, after a public trial and conviction; while the exile of these unconvicted, untried, and most probably innocent persons is continued for life, on charges as unknown to themselves as their destiny and residence remain to their families and friends.  Happy England! where no one is condemned unheard, and no one dares attempt to make the laws subservient to his passions or caprice.

As to Fouche’s enmity, at which General Murat so plainly hinted, I had long apprehended it from what others, in similar circumstances with myself, had suffered.  He has, since the Revolution, bought no less, than sixteen national estates, seven of the former proprietors of which have suddenly disappeared since his Ministry, probably in the manner he intended to remove me.  This man is one of the most immoral characters the Revolution has dragged forward from obscurity.  It is more difficult to mention a crime that he has not perpetrated than to discover a good or just action that he ever performed.  He is so notorious a villain that even the infamous National Convention expelled him from its bosom, and since his Ministry no man has been found base enough, in my debased country, to extenuate, much less to defend, his past enormities.  In a nation so greatly corrupted and immoral, this alone is more than negative evidence.