This anecdote about Fournois I heard General Savary relate at Madame Duchatel’s, as a proof of Bonaparte’s generosity and clemency, which, he affirmed, excited the admiration of the whole camp at Boulogne.  I do not suppose this officer to be above thirty years of age, of which he has passed the first twenty-five in orphan-houses or in watch-houses; but no tyrant ever had a more cringing slave, or a more abject courtier.  His affectation to extol everything that Bonaparte does, right or wrong, is at last become so habitual that it is naturalized, and you may mistake for sincerity that which is nothing but imposture or flattery.  This son of a Swiss porter is now one of Bonaparte’s adjutants-general, a colonel of the Gendarmes d’Elite, a general of brigade in the army, and a commander of the Legion of Honour; all these places he owes, not to valour or merit, but to abjectness, immorality, and servility.  When an aide-de-camp with Bonaparte in Egypt, he served him as a spy on his comrades and on the officers of the staff, and was so much detested that, near Aboukir, several shots were fired at him in his tent by his own countrymen.  He is supposed still to continue the same espionage; and as a colonel of the Gendarmes d’Elite, he is charged with the secret execution of all proscribed persons or State prisoners, who have been secretly condemned,—­a commission that a despot gives to a man he trusts, but dares not offer to a man he esteems.  He is so well known that the instant he enters a society silence follows, and he has the whole conversation to himself.  This he is stupid enough to take for a compliment, or for a mark of respect, or an acknowledgment of his superior parts and intelligence, when, in fact, it is a direct reproach with which prudence arms itself against suspected or known dishonesty.  Besides his wife, he has to support six other women whom he has seduced and ruined; and, notwithstanding the numerous opportunities his master has procured him of pillaging and enriching himself, he is still much in debt; but woe to his creditors were they indiscreet enough to ask for their payments!  The Secret Tribunal would soon seize them and transport them, or deliver them over to the hands of their debtor, to be shot as traitors or conspirators.

LETTER II.

Paris, September, 1805.

My lord:—­I am told that it was the want of pecuniary resources that made Bonaparte so ill-tempered on his last levee day.  He would not have come here at all, but preceded his army to Strasburg, had his Minister of Finances, Gaudin, and his Minister of the Public Treasury, Marbois, been able to procure forty-four millions of livres—­to pay a part of the arrears of the troops; and for the speedy conveyance of ammunition and artillery towards the Rhine.