A man of the name of Villeaume, an engraver by profession, took advantage of this knightly fashion and mania, and sold for four louis d’or, not only the stars, but pretended letters of knighthood, said to be procured by his connection with persons of the household of the Emperor.  In a month’s time, according to a register kept by him, he had made twelve hundred and fifty knights.  When his fraud was discovered, he was already out of the way, safe with his money; and, notwithstanding the researches of the police, has not since been taken.

A person calling himself Baron von Rinken, a subject and an agent of one of the many Princes of Hohenlohe, according to his own assertion, arrived here with real letters and patents of knighthood, which he offered for sale for three hundred livres.  The stars of this Order were as large as the star of the grand officers of the Legion of Honour, and nearly resembled it; but the ribands were of a different colour.  He had already disposed of a dozen of these stars, when he was taken up by the police and shut up in the Temple, where he still remains.  Four other agents of inferior petty German Princes have also been arrested for offering the Orders of their Sovereigns for sale.

A Captain Rouvais, who received six wounds in his campaign under Pichegru in 1794, wore the star of the Legion of Honour without being nominated a knight.  He has been tried by a military commission, deprived of his pension, and condemned to four years’ imprisonment in irons.  He proved that he had presented fourteen petitions to Bonaparte for obtaining this mark of distinction, but in vain; while hundreds of others, who had hardly seen an enemy, or, at the most, made but one campaign, or been once wounded, had succeeded in their demands.  As soon as sentence had been pronounced against him, he took a small pistol from his pocket, and shot himself through the head, saying, “Some one else will soon do the same for Bonaparte.”

A cobbler, of the name of Matthieu, either in a fit of madness or from hatred to the new order of things, decorated himself with the large riband of the Legion of Honour, and had an old star fastened on his coat.  Thus accoutred, he went into the Palais Royal, in the middle of the day, got upon a chair, and began to speak to his audience of the absurdity of true republicans not being on a level, even under an Emperor, and putting on, like him, all his ridiculous ornaments.  “We are here,” said he, “either all grand officers, or there exist no grand officers at all; we have all fought and paid for liberty, and for the Revolution, as much as Bonaparte, and have, therefore, the same right and claim with him.”  Here a police agent and some gendarmes interrupted his eloquence by taking him into custody.  When Fouche asked him what he meant by such rebellious behaviour, he replied that it was only a trial to see whether destiny had intended him to become an Emperor or to remain a cobbler.  On the next day he was shot as a conspirator.  I saw the unfortunate man in the Palais Royal; his eyes looked wild, and his words were often incoherent.  He was certainly a subject more deserving a place in a madhouse than in a tomb.