e present was kept, but the offer declined.

All the members of the Bonaparte family, female as well as male, honour
her house with their visits and with the acceptance of her invitations;
and it is, therefore, among our fashionables, the 'haut ton' to be of the
society and circle of Madame de C----n.

Last February, Madame de P----t (the wife of Comte de P----t, a relative,
by her husband's side, of Madame de C----n, and who by the Revolution
lost all their property, and now live with her as companions) was brought
to bed of a son; the child was baptized by the Cardinal de Belloy, and
Madame Joseph and Prince Louis Bonaparte stood sponsors. This occurrence
was celebrated with great pomp, and a fete was given to nearly one
hundred and fifty per sons of both sexes,--as usual, a mixture of
ci-devant nobles and of ci-devant sans-culottes; of rank and meanness; of
upstart wealth and beggared dignity.

What that day struck me most was the audacity of the Senator Villetard in
teasing and insulting the old Cardinal de Belloy with his impertinent
conversation and affected piety. This Villetard was, before the
Revolution, a journeyman barber, and was released in 1789 by the mob from
the prison of the Chatelet, where he was confined for theft. In 1791 his
patriotism was so well known in the Department of Yonne, that he was
deputed by the Jacobins there to the Jacobins of the capital with an
address, encouraging and advising the deposition of Louis XVI.; and in
1792 he was chosen a member of the National Convention, where the most
sanguinary and most violent of the factions were always certain to reckon
him in the number of their adherents.

In December, 1797, when an insurrection, prepared by Joseph Bonaparte at
Rome, deprived the late revered pontiff both of his sovereignty and
liberty, Villetard was sent by the Jacobin and atheistical party of the
Directory to Loretto, to seize and carry off the celebrated Madonna. In
the execution of this commission he displayed a conduct worthy the
littleness of his genius and the criminality of his mind. The wooden
image of the Holy Virgin, a black gown said to have appertained to her,
together with three broken china plates, which the Roman Catholic
faithful have for ages believed to have been used by her, were presented
by him to the Directory, with a cruelly scandalous show, accompanied by a
horribly blasphemous letter. He passed the next night, after he had
perpetrated this sacril