nsul to the Helvetic Government. He there conducted himself
so much to the satisfaction of Bonaparte, that, on the rupture with your
country, he was made commander of the camp near Montreuil; and last year
his wife was received as a Maid of Honour to the Empress of the French.

This Maid of Honour is the daughter of a washer-woman, and was kept by a
man-milliner at Strasburg, at the time that she eloped with Ney. With
him she had made four campaigns as a mistress before the municipality of
Coblentz made her his wife. Her conduct since has corresponded with that
of her husband. When he publicly lived with mistresses, she did not live
privately with her gallants, but the instant the Emperor of the French
told him to save appearances, if he desired a place for his wife at the
Imperial Court, he showed himself the most attentive and faithful of
husbands, and she the most tender and dutiful of wives. Her manners are
not polished, but they are pleasing; and though not handsome in her
person, she is lively; and her conversation is entertaining, and her
society agreeable. The Princesse Louis Bonaparte is particularly fond of
her, more so than Napoleon, perhaps, desires. She has a fault common
with most of our Court ladies: she cannot resist, when opportunity
presents itself, the temptation of gambling, and she is far from being
fortunate. Report says that more than once she has been reduced to
acquit her gambling debts by personal favours.

Another of our generals, and the richest of them all who are now serving
under Bonaparte, is his brother-in-law, Prince Murat. According to some,
he had been a Septembrizer, terrorist, Jacobin, robber, and assassin,
long before he obtained his first commission as an officer, which was
given him by the recommendation of Marat, whom he in return afterwards
wished to immortalize, by the exchange of one letter in his own name, and
by calling himself Marat instead of Murat. Others, however, declare that
his father was an honest cobbler, very superstitious, residing at
Bastide, near Cahors, and destined his son to be a Capuchin friar, and
that he was in his novitiate when the Revolution tempted him to exchange
the frock of the monk for the regimentals of a soldier. In what manner,
or by what achievements, he gained promotion is not certain, but in 1796
he was a chief of brigade, and an aide-de-camp of Bonaparte, with whom he
went to Egypt, and returned thence with him, and who, in 1801,