ibel
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