Raudot.  He instantly obeyed the summons.  On coming into Napoleon’s presence he said, “What do you want, General?” This appellation displeased Napoleon, who nevertheless put several questions to M. Raudot, who was willing to oblige him as a traveller, but not to serve him as an Emperor.  Napoleon having given him some orders, this worthy servant of the King replied, “General, I can receive no orders from you, for I acknowledge no sovereign but the King, to whom I have sworn allegiance.”  Napoleon then directed M. Raudot, in a tone of severity, to withdraw, and I need not add that it was not long before he was dismissed from the mayoralty of Avalon.

The elections of the Yonne being over, I returned to Paris, where I took part in public affairs only as an amateur, while waiting for the opening of the session.  I was deeply grieved to see the Government resort to measures of severity to punish faults which it would have been better policy to attribute only to the unfortunate circumstances of the times.  No consideration can ever make me cease to regret the memory of Ney, who was the victim of the influence of foreigners.  Their object, as Blucher intimated to me at St. Cloud, was to disable France from engaging in war for a long time to come, and they hoped to effect that object by stirring up between the Royal Government and the army of the Loire that spirit of discord which the sacrifice of Ney could not fail to produce.  I have no positive proofs of the fact, but in my opinion Ney’s life was a pledge of gratitude which Fouche thought he must offer to the foreign influence which had made him Minister.

About this time I learned a fact which will create no surprise, as it affords another proof of the chivalrous disinterestedness of Macdonald’s character.  When in 1815 several Marshals claimed from the Allied powers their endowments in foreign countries, Madame Moreau, to whom the King had given the honorary title of ‘Madame la Marechale’, and who was the friend of the Duke of Tarentum, wrote, without Macdonald’s knowledge, to M. de Blacas; our ambassador at Naples, begging him to endeavour to preserve for the Marshal the endowment which had been given him in the Kingdom of Naples.  As soon as Macdonald was informed of this circumstance he waited upon Madame Moreau, thanked her for her kind intentions, but at the same time informed her that he should disavow all knowledge of her letter, as the request it contained was entirely averse to his principles.  The Marshal did, in fact, write the following letter to M. de Blacas:—­“I hasten to inform you, sir, that it was not with my consent that Madame Moreau wrote to you, and I beg you will take no step that might expose me to a refusal.  The King of Naples owes me no recompense for having beaten his army, revolutionised his kingdom, and forced him to retire to Sicily.”  Such conduct was well worthy of the man who was the last to forsake Napoleon in, 1814, and the first to rejoin him, and