hat it was not long before he was dismissed from the mayoralty of
Avalon.

The elections of the Yonne being over, I returned to Paris, where I took
part in public affairs only as an amateur, while waiting for the opening
of the session. I was deeply grieved to see the Government resort to
measures of severity to punish faults which it would have been better
policy to attribute only to the unfortunate circumstances of the times.
No consideration can ever make me cease to regret the memory of Ney, who
was the victim of the influence of foreigners. Their object, as Blucher
intimated to me at St. Cloud, was to disable France from engaging in war
for a long time to come, and they hoped to effect that object by stirring
up between the Royal Government and the army of the Loire that spirit of
discord which the sacrifice of Ney could not fail to produce. I have no
positive proofs of the fact, but in my opinion Ney's life was a pledge of
gratitude which Fouche thought he must offer to the foreign influence
which had made him Minister.

About this time I learned a fact which will create no surprise, as it
affords another proof of the chivalrous disinterestedness of Macdonald's
character. When in 1815 several Marshals claimed from the Allied powers
their endowments in foreign countries, Madame Moreau, to whom the King
had given the honorary title of 'Madame la Marechale', and who was the
friend of the Duke of Tarentum, wrote, without Macdonald's knowledge, to
M. de Blacas; our ambassador at Naples, begging him to endeavour to
preserve for the Marshal the endowment which had been given him in the
Kingdom of Naples. As soon as Macdonald was informed of this
circumstance he waited upon Madame Moreau, thanked her for her kind
intentions, but at the same time informed her that he should disavow all
knowledge of her letter, as the request it contained was entirely averse
to his principles. The Marshal did, in fact, write the following letter
to M. de Blacas:--"I hasten to inform you, sir, that it was not with my
consent that Madame Moreau wrote to you, and I beg you will take no step
that might expose me to a refusal. The King of Naples owes me no
recompense for having beaten his army, revolutionised his kingdom, and
forced him to retire to Sicily." Such conduct was well worthy of the man
who was the last to forsake Napoleon in, 1814, and the first to rejoin
him, and that without the desire of accepting any appointment in 1815.
M. de B