PARIS, September, 1805.
My LORD:--Madame de C------n is now one of our most fashionable ladies.
Once in the week she has a grand tea-party; once in a fortnight a grand
dinner; and once in the month a grand ball. Foreign gentlemen are
particularly well received at her house, which, of course, is much
frequented by them. As you intend to visit this country after a peace,
it may be of some service to you not to be unacquainted with the portrait
of a lady whose invitation to see the original you may depend upon the
day after your arrival.
Madame de C----n is the widow of the great and useless traveller, Comte
de C----n, to whom his relatives pretend that she was never married. Upon
his death-bed he acknowledged her, however, for his wife, and left her
mistress of a fortune of three hundred thousand livres a year. The first
four years of her widowhood she passed in lawsuits before the tribunals,
where the plaintiffs could not prove that she was unmarried, nor she
herself that she was married. But Madame Napoleon Bonaparte, for a small
douceur, speaking in her favour, the consciences of the juries, and the
understanding of the judges, were all convinced at once that she had been
the lawful wife, and was the lawful heiress, of Comte de C----n, who had
no children, or nearer relatives than third cousins.
Comte de C----n was travelling in the East Indies when the Revolution
broke out. His occupation there was a very innocent one; he drew
countenances, being one of the most enthusiastic sectaries of Lavater,
and modestly called himself the first physiognomist in the world. Indeed,
he had been at least the most laborious one; for he left behind him a
collection of six thousand two hundred portraits, drawn by himself in the
four quarters of the world, during a period of thirty years.
He never engaged a servant, nor dealt with a tradesman, whose physiognomy
had not been examined by him. In his travels he preferred the worst
accommodation in a house where he approved of the countenance of the
host, to the best where the traits or lines of the landlord’s face were
irregular, or did not coincide with his ideas of physiognomical
propriety. The cut of a face, its expression, the length of the nose,
the width or smallness of the mouth, the form of the eyelids or of the
ears, the colour or thickness of the hair, with the shape and tout
ensemble of the head, were always minutely considered and discussed
before he entered into any agreement, on any subject, with any individual
whatever. Whatever recommendations, or whatever attestations were
produced, if they did not correspond with his own physiognomical remarks
and calculations, they were disregarded; while a person whose physiognomy
pleased him required no other introduction to obtain his confidence.
Whether he thought himself wiser than his forefathers, he certainly did
not grow richer than they were. Charlatans who imposed upon his
credulity and impostors who flattered his mania, servants who robbed him
and mistresses who deceived him, proved that if his knowledge of
physiognomy was great, it was by no means infallible. At his death, of
the fortune left him by his parents only the half remained.
His friends often amused themselves at the expense of his foibles. When
he prepared for a journey to the East, one of them recommended him a
servant, upon whose fidelity he could depend. After examining with
minute scrupulosity the head of the person, he wrote: “My friend, I
accept your valuable present. From calculations, which never deceive me,
Manville (the servant’s name) possesses, with the fidelity of a dog, the
intrepidity of the lion. Chastity itself is painted on his front,
modesty in his looks, temperance on his cheek, and his mouth and nose
bespeak honesty itself.” Shortly after the Count had landed at
Pondicherry, Mauville, who was a girl, died, in a condition which showed
that chastity had not been the divinity to whom she had chiefly
sacrificed. In her trunk were found several trinkets belonging to her
master, which she honestly had appropriated to herself. His
miscalculation on this subject the Count could not but avow; he added,
however, that it was the entire fault of his friend, who had duped him
with regard to the sex.
Madame de C----n was, on account of her physiognomy, purchased by her
late husband, then travelling in Turkey, from a merchant of Circassian
slaves, when she was under seven years of age, and sent for her education
to a relative of the Count, an Abbess of a convent in Languedoc. On his
return from Turkey, some years afterwards, he took her under his own
care, and she accompanied him all over Asia, and returned first to France
in 1796, where her husband’s name was upon the list of emigrants, though
he had not been in Europe for ten years before the Revolution.
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.
What that day struck me most was the audacity of the Senator Villetard in
teasing and insulting the old Cardinal de Belloy with his impertinent
conversation and affected piety. This Villetard was, before the
Revolution, a journeyman barber, and was released in 1789 by the mob from
the prison of the Chatelet, where he was confined for theft. In 1791 his
patriotism was so well known in the Department of Yonne, that he was
deputed by the Jacobins there to the Jacobins of the capital with an
address, encouraging and advising the deposition of Louis XVI.; and in
1792 he was chosen a member of the National Convention, where the most
sanguinary and most violent of the factions were always certain to reckon
him in the number of their adherents.
In December, 1797, when an insurrection, prepared by Joseph Bonaparte at
Rome, deprived the late revered pontiff both of his sovereignty and
liberty, Villetard was sent by the Jacobin and atheistical party of the
Directory to Loretto, to seize and carry off the celebrated Madonna. In
the execution of this commission he displayed a conduct worthy the
littleness of his genius and the criminality of his mind. The wooden
image of the Holy Virgin, a black gown said to have appertained to her,
together with three broken china plates, which the Roman Catholic
faithful have for ages believed to have been used by her, were presented
by him to the Directory, with a cruelly scandalous show, accompanied by a
horribly blasphemous letter. He passed the next night, after he had
perpetrated this sacrilege, with two prostitutes, in the chapel of the
Holy Virgin; and, on the next morning, placed one of them, naked, on the
pedestal where the statue of the Virgin had formerly stood, and ordered
all the devotees at Loretto, and two leagues round, to prostrate
themselves before her. This shocking command occasioned the premature
death of fifteen ladies, two of whom, who were nuns, died on the spot on
beholding the horrid outrage; and many more were deprived of their
reason. How barbarously unfeeling must that wretch be who, in bereaving
the religious, the pious, and the conscientious of their consolation and
hope, adds the tormenting reproach of apostasy, by forcing virtue upon
its knees to bow before what it knows to be guilt and infamy.
A traitor to his associates as to his God, it was he who, in November,
1799, presented at St. Cloud the decree which excluded all those who
opposed Bonaparte’s authority from the Council of Five Hundred, and
appointed the two committees which made him a First Consul. In reward
for this act of treachery, he was nominated to a place in the
Conservative Senate. He has now ranked himself among our modern saints,
goes regularly to Mass and confesses; has made a brother of his, who was
a drummer, an Abbe; and his assiduity about the Cardinal was probably
with a view to obtain advancement for this edifying priest.
The Cardinal de Belloy is now ninety-six years of age, being born in
1709, and has been a Bishop for fifty-three years, but, during the
Revolution, was proscribed, with all other prelates. He remained,
however, in France, where his age saved him from the guillotine, but not
from being reduced to the greatest want. A descendant of a noble family,
and possessing an unpolluted character, Bonaparte fixed upon him as one
of the pillars for the reestablishment of the Catholic worship, made him
an Archbishop of Paris, and procured him the rank of a Cardinal from
Rome. But he is now in his second childhood, entirely directed by his
grand vicaries, Malaret, De Mons, and Legeas, who are in the pay of, and
absolutely devoted to, Bonaparte. An innocent instrument in their hands,
of those impious compliments pronounced by him to the Emperor and the
Empress, he did not, perhaps, even understand the meaning. From such a
man the vile and artful Villetard might extort any promise. I observed,
however, with pleasure, that he was watched by the grand vicar, Malaret,
who seldom loses sight of His Eminence.
These two so opposite characters--I mean De Belloy and Villetard--are
already speaking evidences of the composition of the society at Madame de
C----n’s. But I will tell you something still more striking. This lady
is famous for her elegant services of plate, as much as for her delicate
taste in entertaining her parties. After the supper on this night,
eleven silver and four gold plates, besides numerous silver and gold
spoons, forks, etc., were missed. She informed Fouche of her loss, who
had her house surrounded by spies, with orders not to let any servant
pass without undergoing a strict search. The first gentleman who called
for his carriage was His Excellency the Counsellor of State and grand
officer of the Legion of Honour, Treilhard. His servants were stopped
and the cause explained. They willingly, and against the protest of
their master, suffered themselves to be searched. Nothing was found upon
them; but the police agents, observing the full-dress hat of their master
rather bulky under his arm, took the liberty to look into it, where they
found one of Madame de C----n’s gold plates and two of her spoons. His
Excellency immediately ordered his servants to be arrested, for having
concealed their theft there. Fouche, however, when called out, advised
his friend to forgive them for misplacing them, as the less said on the
subject the better. When Madame de C----n heard of this discovery, she
asked Fouche to recall his order or to alter it. “A repetition of such
misplacings in the hats or in the pockets of the masters,” said she,
“would injure the reputation of my house and company.” She never
recovered the remainder of her loss, and that she might not be exposed in
future to the same occurrences, she bought two services of china the
following day, to be used when she had mixed society.
Treilhard had, before the Revolution, the reputation of being an honest
man and an able advocate; but has since joined the criminals of all
factions, being an accomplice in their guilt and a sharer of their
spoils. In the convention, he voted for the death of Louis XVI. and
pursued without mercy the unfortunate Marie Antoinette to the scaffold.
During his missions in the departments, wherever he went the guillotine
was erected and blood flowed in streams. He was, nevertheless, accused
by Robespierre of moderatism. At Lille, in 1797, and at Rastadt, in
1798, he negotiated as a plenipotentiary with the representatives of
Princes, and in 1799 corresponded as a director with Emperors and Kings,
to whom he wrote as his great and dear friends. He is now a Counsellor
of State, in the section of legislation, and enjoys a fortune of several
millions of livres, arising from estates in the country, and from leases
in the capital. As this accident at Madame de C----n’s soon became
public, his friends gave out that he had of late been exceedingly absent,
and, from absence of mind, puts everything he can lay hold of into his
pocket. He is not a favourite with Madame Bonaparte, and she asked her
husband to dismiss and disgrace him for an act so disgraceful to a grand
officer of the Legion of Honour, but was answered, “Were I to turn away
all the thieves and rogues that encompass me I should soon cease to
reign. I despise them, but I must employ them.”
It is whispered that the police have discovered another of Madame de C
n’s lost gold plates at a pawnbroker’s, where it had been pledged by the
wife of another Counsellor of State, Francois de Nantes.
This I give you merely as a report! though the fact is, that Madame
Francois is very fond of gambling, but very unfortunate; and she, with
other of our fashionable ladies, has more than once resorted to her
charms for the payment of her gambling debts.