PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--On the arrival of her husband at Aix-la-Chapelle, Madame
Napoleon had lost her money by gambling, without recovering her health by
using the baths and drinking the waters; she was, therefore, as poor as
low-spirited, and as ill-tempered as dissatisfied. Napoleon himself was
neither much in humour to supply her present wants, provide for her
extravagances, or to forgive her ill-nature; he ascribed the inefficacy
of the waters to her excesses, and reproached her for her too great
condescension to many persons who presented themselves at her
drawing-room and in her circle, but who, from their rank in life, were
only fit to be seen as supplicants in her antechambers, and as associates
with her valets or chambermaids.
The fact was that Madame Napoleon knew as well as her husband that these
gentry were not in their place in the company of an Empress; but they
were her creditors, some of them even Jews; and as long as she continued
debtor to them she could not decently--or rather, she dared not prevent
them from being visitors to her. By confiding her situation to her old
friend, Talleyrand, she was, however, soon released from those
troublesome personages. When the Minister was informed of the occasion
of the attendance of these impertinent intruders, he humbly proposed to
Bonaparte not to pay their demands and their due, but to make them
examples of severe justice in transporting them to Cayenne, as the only
sure means to prevent, for the future, people of the same description
from being familiar or audacious.
When, thanks to Talleyrand’s interference, these family arrangements were
settled, Madame Napoleon recovered her health with her good-humour; and
her husband, who had begun to forget the English blockade, only to think
of the papal accolade (dubbing), was more tender than ever. I am assured
that, during the fortnight he continued with his wife at Aix-la-Chapelle,
he only shut her up or confined her twice, kicked her three times, and
abused her once a day.
It was during their residence in that capital that Comte de Segur at last
completed the composition of their household, and laid before them the
list of the ladies and gentlemen who had consented to put on their
livery. This De Segur is a kind of amphibious animal, neither a royalist
nor a republican, neither a democrat nor an aristocrat, but a disaffected
subject under a King, a dangerous citizen of a Commonwealth, ridiculing
both the friend of equality and the defender of prerogatives; no exact
definition can be given, from his past conduct and avowed professions, of
his real moral and political character. One thing only is certain;--he
was an ungrateful traitor to Louis XVI., and is a submissive slave under
Napoleon the First.
Though not of an ancient family, Comte de Segur was a nobleman by birth,
and ranked among the ancient French nobility because one of his ancestors
had been a Field-marshal. Being early introduced at Court, he acquired,
with the common corruption, also the pleasing manners of a courtier; and
by his assiduities about the Ministers, Comte de Maurepas and Comte de
Vergennes, he procured from the latter the place of an Ambassador to the
Court of St. Petersburg. With some reading and genius, but with more
boasting and presumption, he classed himself among French men of letters,
and was therefore as such received with distinction by Catharine II., on
whom, and on whose Government, he in return published a libel. He was a
valet under La Fayette, in 1789, as he has since been under every
succeeding King of faction. The partisans of the Revolution pointed him
out as a fit Ambassador from Louis XVI. to the late King of Prussia; and
he went in 1791 to Berlin, in that capacity; but Frederick William II.
refused him admittance to his person, and, after some ineffectual
intrigues with the Illuminati and philosophers at Berlin, he returned to
Paris as he left it; provided, however, with materials for another libel
on the Prussian Monarch, and on the House of Brandenburgh, which he
printed in 1796. Ruined by the Revolution which he had so much admired,
he was imprisoned under Robespierre, and was near starving under the
Directory, having nothing but his literary productions to subsist on. In
1799, Bonaparte made him a legislator, and in 1803, a Counsellor of
State,--a place which he resigned last year for that of a grand master of
the ceremonies at the present Imperial Court. His ancient inveteracy
against your country has made him a favourite with Bonaparte. The
indelicate and scandalous attacks, in 1796 and 1797, against Lord
Malmesbury, in the then official journal, Le Redacteur, were the
offspring of his malignity and pen; and the philippics and abusive notes
in our present official Moniteur, against your Government and country,
are frequently his patriotic progeny, or rather, he often shares with
Talleyrand and Hauterive their paternity.
The Revolution has not made Comte de Segur more happy with regard to his
family, than in his circumstances, which, notwithstanding his brilliant
grand-mastership, are far from being affluent. His amiable wife died of
terror, and brokenhearted from the sufferings she had experienced, and
the atrocities she had witnessed; and when he had enticed his eldest son
to accept the place of a sub-prefect under Bonaparte, his youngest son,
who never approved our present regeneration, challenged his brother to
fight, and, after killing him in a duel, destroyed himself. Comte de
Segur is therefore, at present, neither a husband nor a father, but only
a grand master of ceremonies! What an indemnification!
Madame Napoleon and her husband are both certainly under much obligation
to this nobleman for his care to procure them comparatively decent
persons to decorate their levees and drawing-rooms, who, though they have
no claim either to morality or virtue, either to honour or chastity, are
undoubtedly a great acquisition at the Court of St. Cloud, because none
of them has either been accused of murder, or convicted of plunder; which
is the case with some of the Ministers, and most of the generals,
Senators and counsellors. It is true that they are a mixture of beggared
nobles and enriched valets, of married courtesans and divorced wives,
but, for all that, they can with justice demand the places of honour of
all other Imperial courtiers of both sexes.
When Bonaparte had read over the names of these Court recruits, engaged
and enlisted by De Segur, he said, “Well, this lumber must do until we
can exchange it for better furniture.” At that time, young Comte d’
Arberg (of a German family, on the right bank of the Rhine), but whose
mother is one of Madame Bonaparte’s Maids of Honour, was travelling for
him in Germany and in Prussia, where, among other negotiations, he was
charged to procure some persons of both sexes, of the most ancient
nobility, to augment Napoleon’s suite, and to figure in his livery. More
individuals presented themselves for this honour than he wanted, but they
were all without education and without address: ignorant of the world as
of books; not speaking well their own language, much less understanding
French or Italian; vain of their birth, but not ashamed of their
ignorance, and as proud as poor. This project was therefore relinquished
for the time; but a number of the children of the principal ci-devant
German nobles, who, by the Treaty of Luneville and Ratisbon, had become
subjects of Bonaparte, were, by the advice of Talleyrand, offered places
in French Prytanees, where the Emperor promised to take care of their
future advancement. Madame Bonaparte, at the same time, selected
twenty-five young girls of the same families, whom she also offered to
educate at her expense. Their parents understood too well the meaning of
these generous offers to dare decline their acceptance. These children
are the plants of the Imperial nursery, intended to produce future pages,
chamberlains, equerries, Maids of Honour and ladies in waiting, who for
ancestry may bid defiance to all their equals of every Court in
Christendom. This act of benevolence, as it was called in some German
papers, is also an indirect chastisement of the refractory French
nobility, who either demanded too high prices for their degradation, or
abruptly refused to disgrace the names of their forefathers.