Could the veracity of a Fouche, a Real, a Talleyrand, or a Duroc (the only members of this new secret and invisible tribunal for expediting conspirators) be depended upon, they would be the most authentic annalists of these and other interesting secret occurrences.

What I intend relating to you on this subject are circumstances such as they have been reported in our best informed societies by our most inquisitive companions.  Truth is certainly the foundation of these anecdotes; but their parts may be extenuated, diminished, altered, or exaggerated.  Defective or incomplete as they are, I hope you will not judge them unworthy of a page in a letter, considering the grand personage they concern, and the mystery with which he and his Government encompass themselves, or in which they wrap up everything not agreeable concerning them.

A woman is said to have been at the head of the first plot against Napoleon since his proclamation as an Emperor of the French.  She called herself Charlotte Encore; but her real name is not known.  In 1803 she lived and had furnished a house at Abbeville, where she passed for a young widow of property, subsisting on her rents.  About the same time several other strangers settled there; but though she visited the principal inhabitants, she never publicly had any connection with the newcomers.

In the summer of 1803, a girl at Amiens—­some say a real enthusiast of Bonaparte’s, but, according to others, engaged by Madame Bonaparte to perform the part she did demanded, upon her knees, in a kind of paroxysm of joy, the happiness of embracing him, in doing which she fainted, or pretended to faint away, and a pension of three thousand livres—­was settled on her for her affection.

Madame Encore, at Abbeville, to judge of her discourse and conversation, was also an ardent friend and well-wisher of the Emperor; and when, in July, 1804, he passed through Abbeville, on his journey to the coast, she, also, threw herself at his feet, and declared that she would die content if allowed the honour of embracing him.  To this he was going to assent, when Duroc stepped between them, seized her by the arm, and dragged her to an adjoining room, whither Bonaparte, near fainting from the sudden alarm his friend’s interference had occasioned, followed him, trembling.  In the right sleeve of Madame Encore’s gown was found a stiletto, the point of which was poisoned.  She was the same day transported to this capital, under the inspection of Duroc, and imprisoned in the Temple.  In her examination she denied having accomplices, and she expired on the rack without telling even her name.  The sub-prefect at Abbeville, the once famous Andre Dumont, was ordered to disseminate a report that she was shut up as insane in a madhouse.