property, to compensate some of the sufferers by the unprovoked war with England.  In vain did he address himself to his fellow labourer in revolutionary plots, the Counsellor of State, Real, who had been the intermedium between him and Talleyrand, when he was first enlisted among the secret agents; instead of receiving money he heard threats; and, therefore, with as good grace as he could, he made the best of his disappointment; he sported a carriage, kept a mistress, went to gambling-houses, and is now in a fair way to be reduced to the status quo before his brilliant exploits in Great Britain.

Real, besides the place of a Counsellor of State, occupies also the office of a director of the internal police.  Having some difference with my landlord, I was summoned to appear before him at the prefecture of the police.  My friend, M. de Sab-----r, formerly a counsellor of the Parliament at Rouen, happened to be with me when the summons was delivered, and offered to accompany me, being acquainted with Real.  Though thirty persons were waiting in the antechamber at our arrival, no sooner was my friend’s name announced than we were admitted, and I obtained not only more justice than I expected, or dared to claim, but an invitation to Madame Real’s tea-party the same evening.  This justice and this politeness surprised me, until my friend showed me an act of forgery in his possession, committed by Real in 1788, when an advocate of the Parliament, and for which the humanity of my friend alone prevented him from being struck off the rolls, and otherwise punished.

As I conceived my usual societies and coteries could not approve my attendance at the house of such a personage, I was intent upon sending an apology to Madame Real.  My friend, however, assured me that I should meet in her salon persons of all classes and of all ranks, and many I little expected to see associating together.  I went late, and found the assembly very numerous; at the upper part of the hall were seated Princesses Joseph and Louis Bonaparte, with Madame Fouche, Madame Roederer, the cidevant Duchesse de Fleury, and Marquise de Clermont.  They were conversing with M. Mathew de Montmorency, the contractor (a ci-devant lackey) Collot, the ci-devant Duc de Fitz-James, and the legislator Martin, a ci-devant porter:  several groups in the several apartments were composed of a similar heterogeneous mixture of ci-devant nobles and ci-devant valets, of ci-devant Princesses, Marchionesses, Countesses and Baronesses, and of ci-devant chambermaids, mistresses and poissardes.  Round a gambling-table, by the side of the ci-devant Bishop of Autun, Talleyrand, sat Madame Hounguenin, whose husband, a ci-devant shoeblack, has, by the purchase of national property, made a fortune of nine millions of livres—­L375,000.  Opposite them were seated the ci-devant Prince de Chalais, and the present Prince Cambaceres with the ci-devant Comtesse de Beauvais, and Madame Fauve, the