and expressive countenance of Joachim when, having addressed him by the titles of Sire and Your Majesty, he said to me, “Pshaw!  Bourrienne, are we not old comrades?  The Emperor has treated you unjustly; and to whom has he not been unjust?  His displeasure is preferable to his favour, which costs so dear!  He says that he made us Kings; but did we not make him an Emperor?  To you, my friend, whom I have known long and intimately, I can make my profession of faith.  My sword, my blood, my life belong to the Emperor.  When he calls me to the field to combat his enemies and the enemies of France I am no longer a King, I resume the rank of a Marshal of the Empire; but let him require no more.  At Naples I will be King of Naples, and I will not sacrifice to his false calculations the life, the well-being, and the interests of my subjects.  Let him not imagine that he can treat me as he has treated Louis!  For I am ready to defend, even against him, if it must be so, the rights of the people over whom he has appointed me to rule.  Am I then an advance-guard King?” These last words appeared to me peculiarly appropriate in the mouth of Murat, who had always served in the advance-guard of our armies, and I thought expressed in a very happy manner the similarity of his situation as a king and a soldier.

I walked with Murat about half an hour.  In the course of our conversation he informed me that his greatest cause of complaint against the Emperor was his having first put him forward and then abandoned him.  “Before I arrived in Naples,” continued he, “it was intimated to me that there was a design of assassinating me.  What did I do?  I entered that city alone, in full daylight, in an open carriage, for I would rather have been assassinated at once than have lived in the constant fear of being so.  I afterwards made a descent on the Isle of Capri, which succeeded.  I attempted one against Sicily, and am curtain it would have also been successful had the Emperor fulfilled his promise of sending the Toulon fleet to second my operations; but he issued contrary orders:  he enacted Mazarin, and unshed me to play the part of the adventurous Duke of Guise.  But I see through his designs.  Now that he has a son, on whom he has bestowed the title of King of Rome, he merely wishes the crown of Naples to be considered as a deposit in my hands.  He regards Naples as a future annexation to the Kingdom of Rome, to which I foresee it is his design to unite the whole of Italy.  But let him not urge me too far, for I will oppose him, and conquer, or perish in the attempt, sword in hand.”

I had the discretion not to inform Murat how correctly he had divined the plans of the Emperor and his projects as to Italy, but in regard to the Continental system, which, perhaps, the reader will be inclined to call my great stalking-horse, I spoke of it as I had done to the Prince of Sweden, and I perceived that he was fully disposed to follow my advice, as experience has sufficiently proved.  It was in fact the Continental system which separated the interests of Murat from those of the Emperor, and which compelled the new King of Naples to form alliances amongst the Princes at war with France.  Different opinions have been entertained on this Subject; mine is, that the Marshal of the Empire was wrong, but the King of Naples right.