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.

LETTER XII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Bonaparte has been as profuse in his disposal of the Imperial
diadem of Germany, as in his promises of the papal tiara of Rome. The
Houses of Austria and Brandenburgh, the Electors of Bavaria and Baden,
have by turns been cajoled into a belief of his exclusive support towards
obtaining it at the first vacancy. Those, however, who have paid
attention to his machinations, and studied his actions; who remember his
pedantic affectation of being considered a modern, or rather