While Joseph Fesch was a master of a tavern he married the daughter of a tinker, by whom he had three children.  This marriage, according to the republican regulations, had only been celebrated by the municipality at Ajaccio; Fesch, therefore, upon again entering the bosom of the Church, left his municipal wife and children to shift for themselves, considering himself still, according to the canonical laws, a bachelor.  But Madame Fesch, hearing, in 1801, of her ci-devant husband’s promotion to the Archbishopric of Lyons, wrote to him for some succours, being with her children reduced to great misery.  Madame Letitia Bonaparte answered her letter, enclosing a draft for six hundred livres—­informing her that the same sum would be paid her every six months, as long as she continued with her children to reside at Corsica, but that it would cease the instant she left that island.  Either thinking herself not sufficiently paid for her discretion, or enticed by some enemy of the Bonaparte family, she arrived secretly at Lyons in October last year, where she remained unknown until the arrival of the Pope.  On the first day His Holiness gave there his public benediction, she found means to pierce the crowd, and to approach his person, when Cardinal Fesch was by his side.  Profiting by a moment’s silence, she called out loudly, throwing herself at his feet:  “Holy Father!  I am the lawful wife of Cardinal Fesch, and these are our children; he cannot, he dares not, deny this truth.  Had he behaved liberally to me, I should not have disturbed him in his present grandeur; I supplicate you, Holy Father, not to restore me my husband, but to force him to provide for his wife and children, according to his present circumstances.”—­“Matta—­ella e matta, santissimo padre!  She is mad—­she is mad, Holy Father,” said the Cardinal; and the good pontiff ordered her to be taken care of, to prevent her from doing herself or the children any mischief.  She was, indeed, taken care of, because nobody ever since heard what has become either of her or her children; and as they have not returned to Corsica, probably some snug retreat has been allotted them in France.

The purple was never disgraced by a greater libertine than Cardinal Fesch:  his amours are numerous, and have often involved him in disagreeable scrapes.  He had, in 1803, an unpleasant adventure at Lyons, which has since made his stay in that city but short.  Having thrown his handkerchief at the wife of a manufacturer of the name of Girot, she accepted it, and gave him an appointment at her house, at a time in the evening when her husband usually went to the play.  His Eminence arrived in disguise, and was received with open arms.  But he was hardly seated by her side before the door of a closet was burst open, and his shoulders smarted from the lashes inflicted by an offended husband.  In vain did he mention his name and rank; they rather increased than decreased the fury of Girot, who pretended it was utterly impossible