However, by some pecuniary arrangements with Barras, he recovered his property, which he did not long enjoy, for he died in 1798.  The suitors of Madame de C——­n, mistress of a large fortune, with some remnants of beauty and elegance of manners, have been numerous, and among them several Senators and generals, and even the Minister Chaptal.  But she has politely declined all their offers, preferring her liberty and the undisturbed right of following her own inclination to the inconvenient ties of Hymen.  A gentleman, whom she calls, and who passes for, her brother, Chevalier de M de T——­, a Knight of Malta, assists her in doing the honours of her house, and is considered as her favourite lover; though report and the scandalous chronicle say that she bestows her favours on every person who wishes to bestow on her his name, and that, therefore, her gallants are at least as numerous as her suitors.

Such is the true statement of the past, as well as the present, with regard to Madame de C——­n.  She relates, however, a different story.  She says that she is the daughter of the Marquis de M de T-----, of a Languedoc family; that she sailed, when a child, with her mother in a felucca from Nice to Malta, there to visit her brother; was captured by an Algerine pilot, separated from her mother, and carried to Constantinople by a merchant of slaves; there she was purchased by Comte de C——­n, who restored her to her family, and whom, therefore, notwithstanding the difference of their ages, she married from gratitude.  This pretty, romantic story is ordered in our Court circles to be officially believed; and, of course, is believed by nobody, not even by the Emperor and Empress themselves, who would not give her the place of a lady-in-waiting, though her request was accompanied with a valuable diamond to the latter.  The present was kept, but the offer declined.

All the members of the Bonaparte family, female as well as male, honour her house with their visits and with the acceptance of her invitations; and it is, therefore, among our fashionables, the ‘haut ton’ to be of the society and circle of Madame de C——­n.

Last February, Madame de P——­t (the wife of Comte de P——­t, a relative, by her husband’s side, of Madame de C——­n, and who by the Revolution lost all their property, and now live with her as companions) was brought to bed of a son; the child was baptized by the Cardinal de Belloy, and Madame Joseph and Prince Louis Bonaparte stood sponsors.  This occurrence was celebrated with great pomp, and a fete was given to nearly one hundred and fifty per sons of both sexes,—­as usual, a mixture of ci-devant nobles and of ci-devant sans-culottes; of rank and meanness; of upstart wealth and beggared dignity.