As all this official correspondence has been published in England, you may, upon reading the notes presented by Baron de Dreyer, and Mr. Livingstone,

[In consequence of this conduct, Livingstone was recalled by his Government, and lives now in obscurity and disgrace in America.  To console him, however, in his misfortune, Bonaparte, on his departure, presented him with his portrait, enamelled on the lid of a snuff-box, set round with diamonds, and valued at one thousand louis d’or.]

the neutral Ambassadors of Denmark and America, form some tolerably just idea of Talleyrand’s formula.  Their impolitic servility was blamed even by the other members of the diplomatic corps.

Livingstone you know, and perhaps have not to learn that, though a stanch republican in America, he was the most abject courtier in France; and though a violent defender of liberty and equality on the other side of the Atlantic, no man bowed lower to usurpation, or revered despotism more, in Europe.  Without talents, and almost without education, he thinks intrigues negotiations, and conceives that policy and duplicity are synonymous.  He was called here “the courier of Talleyrand,” on account of his voyages to England, and his journeys to Holland, where this Minister sent him to intrigue, with less ceremony than one of his secret agents.  He acknowledged that no Government was more liberal, and no nation more free, than the British; but he hated the one as much as he abused the other; and he did not conceal sentiments that made him always so welcome to Bonaparte and Talleyrand.  Never over nice in the choice of his companions, Arthur O’Connor, and other Irish traitors and vagabonds, used his house as their own; so much so that, when he invited other Ambassadors to dine with him, they, before they accepted the invitation, made a condition that no outlaws or adventurers should be of the party.

In your youth, Baron de Dreyer was an Ambassador from the Court of Copenhagen to that of St. James.  He has since been in the same capacity to the Courts of St. Petersburg and Madrid.  Born a Norwegian, of a poor and obscure family, he owes his advancement to his own talents; but these, though they have procured him rank, have left him without a fortune.  When he came here, in June, 1797, from Spain, he brought a mistress with him, and several children he had had by her during his residence in that country.  He also kept an English mistress some thirty years ago in London, by whom he had a son, M. Guillaumeau, who is now his secretary.  Thus encumbered, and thus situated at the age of seventy, it is no surprise if he strives to die at his post, and that fear to offend Bonaparte and Talleyrand sometimes gets the better of his prudence.

In Denmark, as well as in all other Continental States, the pensions of diplomatic invalids are more scanty than those of military ones, and totally insufficient for a man who, during half a century nearly, has accustomed himself to a certain style of life, and to expenses requisite to represent his Prince with dignity.  No wonder, therefore, that Baron de Dreyer prefers Paris to Copenhagen, and that the cunning Talleyrand takes advantage of this preference.