her beauty, inspired the unprincipled libertine with a desire of ruining innocence, under the colour of clemency to guilt.  He ordered her to call on his chamberlain, Darinsson, in an hour, and she should obtain an answer.  There, either seduced by paternal affection, intimidated by threats, or imposed upon by delusive and engaging promises, she exchanged her virtue for an order of release for her parent; and so satisfied was Louis with his bargain that he added her to the number of his regular mistresses.

As soon as Deroux had recovered his liberty, he visited his daughter in her new situation, where he saw an order of Louis, on the Imperial Treasury, for twelve thousand livres—­destined to pay the upholsterer who had furnished her apartment.  This gave him, no doubt, the idea of making the Prince pay a higher value for his child, and he forged another order for sixty thousand livres—­so closely resembling it that it was without suspicion acquitted by the Imperial Treasurer.  Possessing this money, he fabricated a pass, in the name of Louis, as a courier carrying despatches to the Emperor in Germany, with which he set out, and arrived safe on the other side of the Rhine.  His forgeries were only discovered after he had written a letter from Frankfort to Louis, acquitting his daughter of all knowledge of what he had done.  In the first moment of anger, her Imperial lover ordered her to be arrested, but he has since forgiven her, and taken her back to his favour.  This trick of Deroux has pleased Fouche, who long opposed his release, from a knowledge of his dangerous talent and vicious character.  He had once before released himself with a forged order from the Minister of Police, whose handwriting he had only seen for a minute upon his own mandate of imprisonment.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

A stranger to remorse and repentance, as well as to honour
Accused of fanaticism, because she refused to cohabit with him
As everywhere else, supported injustice by violence
Bonaparte dreads more the liberty of the Press than all other
Chevalier of the Guillotine:  Toureaux
Country where power forces the law to lie dormant
Encounter with dignity and self-command unbecoming provocations
Error to admit any neutrality at all
Expeditious justice, as it is called here
French Revolution was fostered by robbery and murder
He was too honest to judge soundly and to act rightly
Her present Serene Idiot, as she styles the Prince Borghese
If Bonaparte is fond of flattery—­pays for it like a real Emperor
Its pretensions rose in proportion to the condescensions
Jealous of his wife as a lover of his mistress
Justice is invoked in vain when the criminal is powerful
May change his habitations six times in the month—­yet be home
Men and women, old men and children are no more
My maid always sleeps with me when my husband is absent