daughter of a fishwoman, and the wife of a tribune, a ci-devant barber.  In another room, the Bavarian Minister Cetto was conferring with the spy Mehee de la Touche; but observed at a distance by Fouche’s secretary, Desmarets, the son of a tailor at Fontainebleau, and for years a known spy.  When I was just going to retire, the handsome Madame Gillot, and her sister, Madame de Soubray, joined me.  You have perhaps known them in England, where, before their marriage, they resided for five years with their parents, the Marquis and Marquise de Courtin; and were often admired by the loungers in Bond Street.  The one married for money, Gillot, a ci-devant drummer in the French Guard, but who, since the Revolution, has, as a general; made a large fortune; and the other united herself to a ci-devant Abbe, from love; but both are now divorced from their husbands, who passed them without any notice while they were chatting with me.  I was handing Madame Gillot to her carriage, when, from the staircase, Madame de Soubray called to us not to quit her, as she was pursued by a man whom she detested, and wished to avoid.  We had hardly turned round, when Mehee offered her his arm, and she exclaimed with indignation, “How dare you, infamous wretch, approach me, when I have forbidden you ever to speak to me?  Had you been reduced to become a highwayman, or a housebreaker, I might have pitied your infamy; but a spy is a villain who aggravates guilt by cowardice and baseness, and can inspire no noble soul with any other sentiment but abhorrence, and the most sovereign contempt.”  Without being disconcerted, Mehee silently returned to the company, amidst bursts of laughter from fifty servants, and as many masters, waiting for their carriages.  M. de Cetto was among the latter, but, though we all fixed our eyes steadfastly upon him, no alteration could be seen on his diplomatic countenance:  his face must surely be made of brass or his heart of marble.

LETTER VI.

Paris, August, 1805.

My Lord:—­The day on which Madame Napoleon Bonaparte was elected an Empress of the French, by the constitutional authorities of her husband’s Empire, was, contradictory as it may seem, one of the most uncomfortable in her life.  After the show and ceremony of the audience and of the drawing-room were over, she passed it entirely in tears, in her library, where her husband shut her up and confined her.

The discipline of the Court of St. Cloud is as singular as its composition is unique.  It is, by the regulation of Napoleon, entirely military.  From the Empress to her lowest chambermaid, from the Emperor’s first aide-de-camp down to his youngest page, any slight offence or negligence is punished with confinement, either public or private.  In the former case the culprits are shut up in their own apartments, but in the latter they are ordered into one of the small rooms, constructed in the dark galleries at the Tuileries and St. Cloud, near the kitchens, where they are guarded day and night by sentries, who answer for their persons, and that nobody visits them.