covered cart, which carried him under escort to the
left bank of the Rhine; where he was left with orders, under pain of
death, never more to enter the territory of the French Empire. This
expeditious and summary justice silenced all other connoisseurs and
antiquarians; and relics of Charlemagne have since poured in in such
numbers from all parts of France, Italy, Germany, and even Denmark, that
we are here in hope to see one day established a Museum Charlemagne, by
the side of the museums Napoleon and Josephine. A ballad, written in
monkish Latin, said to be sung by the daughters and maids of Charlemagne
at his Court on great festivities, was addressed to Duroc, by a Danish
professor, Cranener, who in return was presented, on the part of
Bonaparte, with a diamond ring worth twelve thousand livres--L 500. This
ballad may, perhaps, be the foundation of future Bibliotheque or Lyceum
Charlemagne.

LETTER XI.

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 descript