as recalled by his
Government, and lives now in obscurity and disgrace in America. To
console him, however, in his misfortune, Bonaparte, on his departure,
presented him with his portrait, enamelled on the lid of a snuff-box, set
round with diamonds, and valued at one thousand louis d'or.]

the neutral Ambassadors of Denmark and America, form some tolerably just
idea of Talleyrand's formula. Their impolitic servility was blamed even
by the other members of the diplomatic corps.

Livingstone you know, and perhaps have not to learn that, though a stanch
republican in America, he was the most abject courtier in France; and
though a violent defender of liberty and equality on the other side of
the Atlantic, no man bowed lower to usurpation, or revered despotism
more, in Europe. Without talents, and almost without education, he
thinks intrigues negotiations, and conceives that policy and duplicity
are synonymous. He was called here "the courier of Talleyrand," on
account of his voyages to England, and his journeys to Holland, where
this Minister sent him to intrigue, with less ceremony than one of his
secret agents. He acknowledged that no Government was more liberal, and
no nation more free, than the British; but he hated the one as much as he
abused the other; and he did not conceal sentiments that made him always
so welcome to Bonaparte and Talleyrand. Never over nice in the choice of
his companions, Arthur O'Connor, and other Irish traitors and vagabonds,
used his house as their own; so much so that, when he invited other
Ambassadors to dine with him, they, before they accepted the invitation,
made a condition that no outlaws or adventurers should be of the party.

In your youth, Baron de Dreyer was an Ambassador from the Court of
Copenhagen to that of St. James. He has since been in the same capacity
to the Courts of St. Petersburg and Madrid. Born a Norwegian, of a poor
and obscure family, he owes his advancement to his own talents; but
these, though they have procured him rank, have left him without a
fortune. When he came here, in June, 1797, from Spain, he brought a
mistress with him, and several children he had had by her during his
residence in that country. He also kept an English mistress some thirty
years ago in London, by whom he had a son, M. Guillaumeau, who is now his
secretary. Thus encumbered, and thus situated at the age of seventy, it
is no surprise if he strives to die at his post, and that